The device, which resembles the sawed-off head of a driver golf club, uses its Plant CareEngine (or PCE as its literature so abbreviates) to detect such important plant growth criteria as water, fertilizer, humidity, temperature and light.
Having Unreal Engine 3 taking care of the heavy lifting allowed the team at BioWare to focus on being creative and adding everything they wanted to build into the franchise in past games, but simply ran out of time.