Two colleagues (Dr. Attila Kovács and Dr. Gábor Milics) from the Department of Food and Biosystems Engineering of the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences at Mosonmagyaróvár campus spent a week in June at the Harper Adams University (Newport, UK), one of the leading agricultural high education institutes. The main aim of the excursion was to visit the most advanced institution in precision agriculture in Europe. Several meetings were scheduled that included the following areas:
sensor techniques for animal husbandry, robotic usage in agriculture, innovative food production (using fermentation). The main focusing point was the study the so called “Hands Free Hectare” project. This represents automated farm machines  rowing barley remotely, without operators in the driving seats or agronomists on the ground. These machines adapted autonomous navigation systems borrowed by small scale unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones. In this case they can be used to autonomously sow, grow and harvest the cereal crop without a human entering the one-hectare trial area. The successful two year trials leads the researchers to enlarge the scale to 35 ha next year. Dr Kovács and Dr. Milics also visited the University Farm, lecture rooms, laboratories and the university library. They had the opportunity to set up for meetings to discuss with the vice-chancellor and other administrative stuff for further collaboration between Széchenyi and Harper Adams Universities.