Academic projects (current)

Robot Highways
A £2.5 million Innovate UK-funded project. The project will create the largest known global demonstration of robotics and autonomous systems technology that fuse multiple application technologies across a single farming system. Reading will be evaluating the economic impacts and exploring socio-ethical implications and responsible innovation, plus engaging growers, policy-makers and tech developers together to create suitable robotic tech for soft fruit. Read more here.

 

Agri-environment governance post-Brexit
Agri-environment governance post-Brexit is a 750k grant led by the University of Sheffield (Dr Ruth Little); the University of Reading is conducting research on the co-design of the new Environmental Land Management scheme with Defra funded under the ESRC Governance after Brexit scheme. We are also doing some QR-funded research on ‘harder-to-reach’ farmers. Read more here.

 

Barriers to adoption of farm robotics

The group is doing some consultancy work for the FAO on the major barriers to the adoption of autonomous robots in farming. This is informing the FAO’s State of Agriculture report 2022.

 

 

 

 

Farmer behaviour change
Herdadvance
led and funded by the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board is working with 500 dairy farmers in Wales to improve proactive animal health planning. We are evaluating the success of behavioural change interventions.

 

Responsible innovation in practice
The British Academy/Leverhulme have funded a small project looking into the impact of the EPSRC’s responsible innovation framework on the practices of funded research.