The creators of a robot that can swing between trees have won the national Ray Meyer Medal for its design.
The annual award by the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand (IPENZ) is for the best student engineering project from all universities and polytechnics.
The winning students, from Canterbury University, were Scott Paulin, Sean Bayley, Thomas Gilbert and George Wareing.
Their supervisor Stefanie Gutschmidt said the bi-pedal robot was capable of traversing between simulated trees, in a laboratory environment.
"The idea, conceived by Crown Research Institute Scion, was to design a robot that could move from tree-to-tree for navigating through a forest especially for steep slope harvesting.