Revolutionary Essex robotics research wins national award

University of Essex robotics research, which is transforming the way crops are being harvested, has won a national award.

Essex’s Sustainable smArt Robotic Agriculture (SARA) project has won the Best Research Project (Industry Collaboration) at the 2026 UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) AI & Robotics Research Awards.

The award recognises the collaborative work taking place between Essex’s Professor Klaus McDonald-Maier and Dr Vishwanathan Mohan, and industry partners Wilkin and Sons, JEPCO and GyroPlant.

The award citation stated: “The SARA project harnesses robotics and AI to address three critical societal challenges: food security, labour security and climate/sustainability. The research demonstrates deep co-creation with industry, collaborating with innovative and disruptive growers.”

It added: “This sustained industry collaboration has produced deployable low-cost AgriRobotics automation and demonstrated adaptability across different crops, tasks and growing environments.”

The project harnesses the power of robotics and AI to automate repetitive, labour-intensive tasks in farms facing severe labour shortage, while increasing yield, minimizing wastage, carbon footprint and sustaining local production.

Key to the work has been the creation of deployable low-cost AgriRobotics, which can adapt to different environments, tasks and crop types.

Such has been the success of the project, Professor McDonald-Maeir and Dr Mohan have launched a spinout company, Versatile RobotX, which is helping to accelerate the commercialisation of their research and its global impact.

Professor McDonald-Maier, Head Robotics and Embedded Systems Research and Founding CEO, Versatile RobotX, said: “Winning the UKRI AI & Robotics Research Award for Best Research Project (Industry Collaboration) is a major endorsement of what can be achieved when world-class research is co-designed with industry.

“Together with Tiptree, JEPCO and GyroPlant, we’ve delivered robotics that is not only technically advanced, but operationally relevant - improving productivity, quality and labour resilience in fresh produce.”

Dr Mohan, Head AgriRobotics Laboratory and CTO, Versatile RobotX, said: “This award recognises several years of close collaboration with leading growers, end users on an extremely complex robotics challenge with the broader vision to transform ‘how food is produced’ and ‘how people work in harsh farm/food production settings.

“We also want to thank our Essex colleagues in the School of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, EPIC (Essex Plant Innovation Centre), the Research and Enterprise Office, and the Communications Office for all their support.”

The SARA project enjoyed success at last year’s UKRI AI & Robotics Research Awards, where it won the Best Demonstration category.

The robot designed to pick strawberries at Wilkin and Sons was showcased at the Robotics Runway segment at the Innovate UK Robotics Industry Showcase in early March.

The event was aligned with UKRI’s announcement of a £52 million set of competitions for Robotics Adoption Hubs, and the team delivered a live, on-stage strawberry-harvesting demonstration.

• Pictured, from left, are: Jose Gutierrez Espinosa, Research Scientist, Professor Klaus McDonald-Maier,  Daniel Cedillo, Research Officer, Jonathan Dove, General Manager of JEPCO, Andrey Ivanov, Director Wilkin and Sons, and Dr Vishwanathan Mohan.