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Electricity and sensors

All materials are made up of tiny particles called atoms. Atoms are made up of even smaller particles called protons, neutrons and electrons. The protons found in the atom have a positive charge ...

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Artificial pollination

Dr Mark Goodwin of Plant & Food Research explains what artificial pollination is and why it is needed for kiwifruit. Some work of the company PollenPlus is shown, including their QuadDuster ...

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Kiwifruit pollination problems

Next time you eat a kiwifruit, cut it in half and look at it before taking a bite. Look for the little seeds – most kiwifruit have about 1,000, so you can’t miss them. To get seeds in a ...

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Monitoring marine environments with drones

Aerial imaging is not new, and scientists have been using data gathered from manned flights for decades. In recent decades, Earth-oriented satellites have become the dominant method of collating ...

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Bees and varroa

Watch varroa mites (white juveniles and brown adults) on honey bees and learn how they spread viruses that kill bee colonies. Dr Mark Goodwin of Plant & Food Research shows hives being ...

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The development of electrical sensors – timeline

Artificial sensors and probes enable us to overcome the limitations of our human senses and extend them in novel and useful ways, using the scientific concepts of electricity and waves. Find out ...

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Kelp forests after the Kaikōura earthquake

The 2016 Kaikōura earthquake caused sudden large-scale changes along the coastline. The intertidal zones were lifted up to 6 metres in some places. In the media, footage of the uplifted coastline ...

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Robots for horticulture

The value of the horticultural industry will increase with better pollination systems, robust quality control, better traceability systems, more cost-competitive practice and solutions for the ...

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Mechatronics

Robots work using a combination of electronics, computer programming and mechanics called mechatronics. Electricity is key to the functioning of these robots. Usually, a robot is made up of 5 ...

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Sensing robots

If you’re visiting Dale Carnegie and his Mechatronics team at Victoria University, don’t be scared when you are approached by MARVIN (short for Mobile Autonomous Robotic Vehicle for Indoor ...

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Emotional robots

Humans are now developing machines (robots) that imitate human emotion and thought. This Connected article explores the development of artificial intelligence (AI) from a social and ethical ...

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Hi-tech drones copy nature’s design

Animals from bees to bats are inspiring the new generation of drones or flying robots, and large military strike drones aside, the robots themselves are getting smaller, with microdrones the size ...

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Robot sensors

Robots need to interact with their environment. Professor Dale Carnegie of Victoria University explains some of the vast array of sensors and how these enable robots to operate. These can include ...

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RoboBee

See two different methods used to artificially pollinate kiwifruit and learn about them from Dr Mark Goodwin of Plant & Food Research. Dr Paul Martinsen, a research engineer at Plant & ...

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Super sense – an introduction to artificial sensors

Monitoring our world using artificial sensors Artificial sensors enable us to overcome the limitations of our human senses and extend them in novel and useful ways, using the scientific concepts ...

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Investigating robotic milking

Dairy research company DairyNZ set up the Greenfield research farm to investigate the possibility of using automatic milking systems on New Zealand dairy farms. Setting up the farm involved three ...

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Bots vs Beings – the impacts of AI on life and work

Discussions of artificial intelligence (AI) are inseparable from questions of ethics. In 1942, Isaac Asimov famously popularised the idea that intelligent machines should adhere to a moral code ...

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Design a robotic milking system – unit plan

Students use information about an Automated Milking System (AMS) to design the layout of their own farm. Two-dimensional drawings are processed to make three-dimensional models of the layout ...

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Artificial sensors explained

Extending human senses involves finding ways to monitor our environment so that we can ‘see’, ‘feel’ or ‘hear’ things beyond what our senses allow us to do and enable us to respond to changes ...

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To build a bot

This article describes the process undertaken by three students from Feilding’s Manchester Street School as they designed and built a robot that won the New Zealand VEX IQ Challenge. The article ...

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Rocky reefs after the Kaikōura quake: monitoring and ...

A Sustainable Seas National Science Challenge project led by Dr Leigh Tait monitored kelp recovery after the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake. NOTE: This video has no voice over or dialogue, only ...

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GeoNet

All the volcanoes in New Zealand are monitored for activity so that scientists can determine when the next eruption might be. Dr Jan Lindsay introduces us to the monitoring system and how it ...

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Search and rescue robots

Professor Dale Carnegie of Victoria University responded to the search and rescue efforts during the 9/11 World Trade Centre bombing by formulating an innovative design for a series of search and ...

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Artificial sensors – question bank

An inquiry approach is a method often used in science education. The question bank provides an initial list of questions about monitoring our environment using artificial sensors and places where ...

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