ERL STEMM outreach - University of Birmingham

Our lab’s mission is to advance the field of robotics through education and research. We are committed to finding novel robotic solutions to real-world problems. As part of this mission, we regularly organise outreach STEAM Robotics Masterclasses to share our knowledge and passion for robotics with the next generations.

The Extreme Robotics Lab excels in working with industry to develop novel robotic solutions to real-world problems, helping humans live safer and healthier lives. Our masterclasses are short, fun, interactive sessions that are themed around our various research areas to provide students with an insight into our work and research that we. We aim to inspire education and career choice for STEM subjects that support robotics.

The field of robotics is truly multidisciplinary and encompasses a huge number of subjects. Masterclasses are run by expert roboticists from the Extreme Robotics Lab but we often have guest speakers from multiple disciplines from across the university. We demonstrate the practical applications and limitations of robotics and the key STEM concepts that form the foundations of Robotics.

We have built a strong relationship with the Royal Institute London, where we run a yearly week-long masterclass. We also have a long history of delivering masterclasses across the nation and have helped to fund a huge amount of robotics outreach at the RI through our NCNR project.

We offer various masterclass lengths including 1-hour masterclasses, half-day, full-day, and multi-session STEM masterclass series. We also attend multiple events around the country with interactive robotics activities and stands. We continue to work with the wider university community, local and national communities to inspire the next generation of roboticists.

UoB Extreme Robotics Lab - STEM Outreach

STEM outreach activities at the ERL NSRC

Transcript

At the Extreme Robotics Lab we include Outreach in every one of our projects so every different type of research we do, we try to go into the community and inspire the next generation of researchers, and actually show the world what we're researching and why we're researching it, and what the applications are for these cutting-edge technologies.

So we've had a group of children here today from Bishop Challoner Secondary School in Birmingham. They've been programming and building their own robots and racing them against each other, so learning a little bit about coding, a little bit about engineering, and also about the kind of work that's done at this facility, as well as the younger that children start exploring different STEMM subjects and start learning those kind of skills that you use later on in life, the better.

We're here today to kind of see how the skills we learn in lessons and in Extra Care clubs how they kind of correlate to careers and what we can kind of make out these skills in the future. I mean it makes it like a more exciting prospect by seeing the sort of exciting things they do. My favourite part of today was probably watching this big robot and actually seeing how it works because it really does put a real life perspective on it. It's something I'm really passionate about now, trying to get children involved and young people involved, and trying to show people that engineering isn't about sitting at a desk all day or just kind of getting dirty in the cold; in fact there's so many different jobs that people can do and personally, I'm a specially fond of showing girls this.

Seeing another female scientist there makes it a lot more inspiring and you can kind of picture yourself in that role a bit more.

I hope they take home from today a sense of inspiration for new technology and for research so they can help solve some of the problems that the world now faces, including battery recycling and energy recovery.

Extreme Robotics Lab 6 Week Royal Institution STEM Masterclass series 2020

The University of Birmingham's Extreme Robotics lab(ERL) hosted a series of STEM (Science Technology Engineering Maths) masterclasses to encourage young learners to pursue a career in research. This years with the help of the National Centre for Nuclear Robotics and in Collaboration with The Royal Institution we we able to run 6 extremely engaging Saturday masterclasses.

STEM masterclass series at the ERL with the RI London

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Further information

If you have any questions or would like to learn more about our outreach programs or the research that we do, please do not hesitate to get in touch.