His robot Bot2Karot won an award at the Google Science Fair

French highschooler Eliott Sarrey was among the 9 laureates of the Google Science Fair, which awards the best young inventors of the planet every year. He was awarded for Bot2Karot, a robot-gardener remotely controlled by smartphone.

Eliott Sarrey, a head full of ideas

In the workshop he has built in his home, "there is no precautionary principle", says engineer Mickael Sarrey. His son Eliott was always free to do whatever he wanted. And the student got the best of it. When his friends watch television or playing football, he builds pneumatic excavators or crossbows .

Eliott Sarrey is 14 years old, and last September he became the first Frenchman to receive a prize at the Google Science Fair – a contest that awards every year the best inventors aged from 13 to 18. His robot gardener, Bot2Karot received the prize "Incubator". That means a 10,000 euros prize and a year of tutorship backed by a Google engineer in order to help the young French in his IT projects.

Bot2Karot, the robot gardener

Bot2Karot is a robot remotely controlled by smartphone to grow a vegetable garden. Thanks to a camera, sensors and articulated arm, the robot waters and monitors your vegetables for you. He warns you when salads need water or when the soil around the tomatoes need to be worked. You just need to give him adequate instructions with a series of programmed operations.

"My grandmother would spend eight hours a week in her vegetable plot" says the young inventor in a presentation video of his project, "but workers don't have as much time to dedicate to gardening". With Bot2Karot, you don't need to spend hours in your vegetable plot to harvest big radish.

Time and money for his projects

Elisabeth Sarrey, the mother of the young prodigy, would prefer her son to go back to normal life. Since he was awarded in California, interviews add up and late homeworks pile up. Eliott, however, already sees himself using his prize money to go to the US to learn English.

And who knows? In addition to allow workers or handicapped people to enjoy gardening, his invention could lead to applications for the agriculture field. By supervising his work for a year, Google allows the young man from Lorraine to fully develop his project. "We still don't fully realise what's going on" says Mickaël Sarrey: "This is just mental. "

Image: Eliott Sarrey / © Bpifrance