25 November 2009
Massey Man is New Zealand Engineering Innovator of the Year
Dr Rory Flemmer of Massey University’s School of Engineering and Advanced Technology is the winner of the 2009 New Zealand Engineering Excellence Awards Engineering Innovator of the Year.
The New Zealand Engineering Excellence Awards are the premier awards for the engineering professionals of New Zealand. The awards are presented in two major areas: Awards Recognising People, that recognise leadership, innovation, entrepreneurship and our young engineers; and Product and Project Awards that recognise achievement in the specific industries.
Dr Flemmer has a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Natal in South Africa and spent 18 years in America producing robotic and artificial vision systems for Fortune 500 companies such as Sony, Bausch, Union Carbide and Siemens. He was Bausch and Lomb’s international technical consultant and developed the Nimbl line of innovative robots.
In 2005 Dr Flemmer moved to New Zealand to take up a position as Senior Lecturer in the School of Engineering and Advanced Technology (SEAT) at Massey University. His current research areas are automated fruit packing and picking, assessing orchards using geosynchronous satellites, artificial intelligence, artificial vision, sound location for human hearing and development of a novel wheel chair.
Dr Flemmer holds seven full patents and a further four provisions patents for his innovations. His automated fruit packaging system overcomes long term problems, such as ensuring that each piece of fruit is correctly oriented prior to packing and in the case of apples, that the reddest side is uppermost. He has also been exploring how to automate the fruit packing process and has several machines, including robots under development.
‘This is targeted and applied innovation in actual use’ says Carren Blom on behalf of the awards judges, ‘We were impressed with the potential for uptake of the innovations, and also with the potential Dr Flemmer’s work has to improve lives’.
Rebecca Adams
Communications Manager
021479885
04 473 2028
comms@ipenz.org.nz
