Essex strawberry-picking robot wins national award for industry collaboration
From laboratory to strawberry field, a University of Essex robotics project is showing how AI and automation could help solve one of agriculture’s most pressing problems, and it has just won a national award to prove it.
A University of Essex robotics project designed to automate crop harvesting has won the Best Research Project (Industry Collaboration) award at the 2026 UKRI AI & Robotics Research Awards.
The Sustainable smArt Robotic Agriculture (SARA) project was developed in collaboration with industry partners Wilkin and Sons, JEPCO, and GyroPlant, and addresses three interconnected challenges: food security, labour shortages, and sustainability.
Central to the project is the development of low-cost AgriRobotics systems capable of adapting to different crops, tasks, and growing environments, automating repetitive, labour-intensive farm work whilst reducing wastage, carbon footprint, and dependence on increasingly scarce agricultural labour.
The team delivered a live strawberry-harvesting demonstration at the Innovate UK Robotics Industry Showcase in March, an event aligned with UKRI’s announcement of a £52 million competition for Robotics Adoption Hubs.
Building on the project’s success, lead researchers Professor Klaus McDonald-Maier and Dr Vishwanathan Mohan have launched a spinout company, Versatile RobotX, to accelerate the commercialisation of the technology and extend its global impact.
The SARA project previously won the Best Demonstration category at the same awards in 2025.
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