Presentation by Daniel Sandiford following his visit to Iceland on a STEM Study Visit with Science Learning Centre Yorkshire and Humber. Make sure you access the notes to each slide for more detail.
The barren landscape of Iceland provides an ideal testing area for a robot designed for scientific testing on Earth and other planets
The robot I took to Iceland, designed to carry Jimmy, a kind and faithful friend. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to Jimmy
Hot pools of water at about 100 degrees C. Robots are very useful for testing under such conditions
The Geyser erupting, again an opportunity to use robots for testing
Using humans, in this case Charlie, to test temperature and PH of such areas carries risks – chief amongst these being boiled hands. That’s why Charlie did it and not me
The unforgiving terrain of a lava field again tests a robot’s ability. Hiking across one for 8 hours tested our ability too!
The Icelandic solution to transport!
Everyone needs downtime, even Jimmy. Here he is in a hot pool with Phil. For some reason the tempting smell of boiled eggs filled the air
The robot construction team, with Sheridon on the right. He made a robot hand, no one knew why
The robot competing at the Lego League competition at the University of Sheffield. The robot was much more successful in Iceland than on the competition board. In fact, we had a special prize created for us – it was the only time the organisers had seen a robot climb into the opposing enclosure and attack the opposition robotI was going to show the two film clips here. The first has BBC in the background, see if you can spot the loss of a wheel. The second clip I can’t personally watch
Luke Brown, principal designer of the robot, is presented with the award of The Nottingham Post Science and Technology Student of the Year 2012 by the head of Bioconex, where he managed to secure work experience. The ceremony was led by Dino and Pete form Capital FM, who clearly loved the robot and discussed it in their breakfast show the next day!Projects like this increase interest in Science subjects, Bluecoat know has 50 pupils studying AS Physics (up from 4 when I joined 2 years ago). I’m even more proud of the fact that 50% of these pupils are girls, bucking the national trend.