Award winning runs in the family! Robert Mumford wins farm innovation prize at Royal Norfolk Show!

Robert Mumford’s silent robotic bird scarer has won a farm innovation award at the Royal Norfolk Show.

Robert, aged 9, from St Neots in Cambridgeshire, won the “new ideas” prize for non-members, run by the Norfolk Farm Machinery Club (Normac).

His satellite-guided “Ro-Bert” machine scatters flocks of birds by 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 photo of himself.

Robert said ‘the idea came from a local frustration at the use of noisy gas cannon bird scarers.  William Mumford, Robert’s father, helped make the idea a reality.  William is of course our business owner as well as a farmer!

The silent robotic bird scarer works by having different waypoints that it is programmed to go to and stop.  It then moved the gun up and down to scare the birds away.

“The idea popped up in the winter. All the gas guns were going off in the village so the Facebook page was going mad with people saying: What’s that noise, why is this going on? It’s scaring the dogs, why can’t you make a silent one?”

Robert received his farm innovation trophy from Royal Norfolk Show president the Marquess of Cholmondeley.

Robert’s Mother and Father are very proud of his achievement, long may the innovations continue!