News & Press Releases: July to September 2007
News and information from July to September 2007.
"West Wales Summer University"
Network members in Aberystwyth have recently taken part in the Wales Summer University programme aimed at giving year 12 and 13 students experiencing barriers to entering higher education a chance to sample university life.
As part of this year's computer science module 21 students were involved in a project to build small robot boats. The students were introduced to some of the basic concepts of robotics, shown real robots, and taught C programming using a PIC microcontroller before being split into groups of between 4 and 6 and asked to design and build a robot boat. The boat was required to cross a pond while maintaining a fixed heading, turn around 180 degrees when they got near the shore and to sample air temperature as they went. The students were given a selection of recycled building materials (such as drinks bottles), a choice of various motors, and a PIC board with a compass and sonar range finder attached.
The majority of the students had no prior programming experience and none of them had any previous experience of robotics. Yet in with only 8 hours of learning programming and 6 hours to build robots they succeeded!
"What would happen if?"
Professor Noel Sharkey recorded a new 10 part series from the National Geographic Channel for a programme called "What would happen if?". It will be aired in January, 2008. His co-experts were particle physicist Prof. Jim al-Kalili (Atom, BBC4) and Prof. Heinz Wolf (the Great Egg Race).
"Material Beliefs"
Members of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory were interviewed as part of an EPSRC public engagement project called Material Beliefs; the role of this project is for designers and engineers to discuss their research and methodologies, and move towards collaborations. Earlier in July, Professor Kevin Warwick was also interviewed about his research in the Cybernetics group at the University of Reading.
"I-Ropebot"
Professor Noel Sharkey published a feature in the New Scientist about robot programming back to at least 60 AD (see I-Ropebot). An extended version has also appeared in Popular Mechanics, South Africa. The editors of New Scientist have produced a reconstruction of one of the robots for the technical blog on their website with a challenge for readers to produce better versions. You can view this here.
"The blade runner generation"
Professor Kevin Warwick is cited in the Sunday Times article "The blade runner generation". The article explores how robotics and technology is changing the lives not only of the disabled but also of the able-bodied. The article can be found The blade runner generation
"Engineering Everywhere"
Noel Sharkey presented a short documentary about robots with Honda's ASIMO as his sidekick as part of the Engineering Everywhere project. This will be distributed to all UK secondary schools to motivate young people to take robotics as part of the new applied science GCSE. Others involved in this project include Sam Wane from the University of Stafford, Claire Rocks and Roger Ward of Science Systems.
"Androids Advance"
Noel Sharkey, Karen Bultitude and Kevin Warwick were judges at Androids Advance: the UK's first ever humanoid robot championship, which took place on 4 July 2007 at the Science Museum in London. 14 secondary school teams competed in the event, which involved them 'upgrading' a commercially available biped robot (supplied free of charge to the participating schools) prior to the competition. On the day the robots competed in a variety of technical challenges, including a dance-off and an assault course. Special prizes were awarded for 'style', 'innovation' and 'technical merit', as well as the hotly contested 'Pimp My Bot' and 'Baddest Bot' awards. The participating students very much enjoyed their experience and the team hopes to roll out the activity across the UK in the future. The project is the result of a partnership between Kevin Warwick, Mark Gasson and Jim Wyatt from the School of Systems Engineering at the University of Reading and Young Engineers, and was funded by the EPSRC.
"Walking with Robots at TESCO Cardiff Children's Festival"
Dave Barnes, Ashley Green and Claire Rocks all attended the TESCO Cardiff Children's Festival, the theme of which was "Walking with Robots". Festival goes were able to take part in hands-on Lego Mars and Lunar Rover activities and try their hand at driving a remotely controlled planetary rover; see a 50% Scale model of the rover currently proposed for the ExoMars mission in 2015; and using scraps, waste cardboard, tinfoil, anything else they found make their own space robots.
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