© Brittany WoodmanA nine-year-old inventor’s silent robotic scarecrow has won an award for agricultural innovation at the Royal Norfolk Show.
Robert Mumford, from St Neots, Cambridgeshire, won the ‘New Ideas’ award for non-members, organized by the Norfolk Farm Machinery Club (Normac).
Your machine “Ro-BertGuided by satellite, it disperses flocks of birds moving autonomously across fields to pre-programmed positions, triggering the movement of a model boy in a flat cap with a shotgun, based on a photograph of him.
The idea of crop protection grew out of local frustration at the use of noisy gas-cannon scarecrows and was built with the help of his father William, a farmer from Agden Green Farm.
The young innovator, who was given a day off from Kimbolton School to receive his award, said: “There are different waypoints it is programmed to come to and stop at, then move the cannon up and down to scare the birds away.”
It occurred to us that you could sit in it and drive it, but it doesn’t work because the fuse blows.
Robert Mumford
His mother, Emma, said: “We are very proud. It was a Christmas project to remove it from the iPad and integrate it into the workshop. The idea came in winter. All the gas guns went off in the city, so the Facebook page went crazy with people saying, What’s that noise, why is it happening? You scare dogs, why can’t you make a silencer out of it?.”
Normac County organizer Chris Thomas said the competition showed the spirit of agricultural innovation was thriving in Norfolk.