Honor has announced that its first device to go on sale in the UK will be the Honor 6, priced at just under £250.
Smartphone aficionados will probably notice that the brand and device sound familiar – and for good reason, the Huawei Honor 6 has already been available in some markets since earlier in the year.
However, it’s the push beyond the specs that are perhaps more interesting here. This is another Huawei attempt to make significant inroads into European mobile markets.
While it’s already present with its own-name brand, having a second in the running hardly hurts its chances – and allows it to benefit from certain economies of scale. It also makes some sense for people who already recognize the Honor brand in other markets.
Spec-wise it stacks up pretty well on paper, and on board you’ll find a 5-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) display, 3GB RAM and an Octa-core Kirin920 chipset. There’s also a 13-megapixel camera and a 3,100 mAh battery with a claimed life of two days under normal usage. Under-the-bonnet, it runs Android but doesn’t arrive with the newest Lollipop (5.0) version, instead it runs 4.4.2 (KitKat).
However, while Huawei comes at the market with a top-down approach, the company says this new brand will “be shaped by its audience and supporters”.
It also gives the parent company a direct line to consumers; Honor won’t be available in stores, it’s only being offered for sale directly through Amazon.
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This is the robot that will shepherd and keep livestock healthy
The Australian Centre for Field Robotics ( ACFR ) is no stranger to developing innovative ways of modernizing agriculture.
It has previously presented technologies for robots that can measure crop yields and collect data about the quality and variability of orchards , but its latest project is far more ambitious: it’s building a machine that can autonomously run livestock farms.
While the ACFR has been working on this technology since 2014, the robot – previously known as ‘ Shrimp’ – is set to start a two-year trial next month. Testing will take place at several farms nearby New South Wales province in Australia.
During this trial, researchers will train the robot to shepherd animals, monitor their health and make sure that herds are well fed at all times.
To track the health of the livestock, the four-wheeled farmbot mounts various thermal and vision sensors that can detect changes in the behavior and body temperature of the animals in real time.
The robot will also come with a functionality that continuously checks the ground for pasture quality.
“We want to improve the quality of animal health and make it easier for farmers to maintain large landscapes where animals roam free,” project lead Salah Sukkarieh told New Scientist . “It’s farmers who are driving this because labour is in short supply and they are looking for technological assistance”, he continues.
Among other things, the researchers will be looking to tweak the software of the robot to make it better at spotting ill livestock and to ensure the machine can safely move through rough terrain like swamps and hills.
So far it is not clear what capacity the robot will have, but its predecessor, Shrimp, could reportedly handle shepherding herds of between 20 to 150 animals.
If the trials are successful, the technology has the potential not only to make livestock farming much more efficient and organized, but also to provide better care for ailing animals that often go unnoticed for long periods of time.
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