Posted 27 January 2014
"We already have robots working in factories producing cars, robots are being developed to help farmers produce more food and to help in the home – but what else might they be able to help us do in the future, how might they do that and what might they look like?"
Young people from throughout the UK are being invited to design a robot for the future and win up to £600 for themselves and possibly £300 for their school.
Design Your Own Robot is the theme of Harper Adams University’s inaugural Young Innovator of the Year awards. Young people aged between 11 and 19 are invited to submit a poster, web page or video identifying an issue faced by society and their proposal for a robot that could help solve this problem.
Harper Adams senior lecturer Greg Rowsell, who specialises in design engineering, said: “We already have robots working in factories producing cars, robots are being developed to help farmers produce more food and to help in the home – but what else might they be able to help us do in the future, how might they do that and what might they look like? Those are questions we’d like Young Innovators to answer in their entries.
“Many young people have great imaginations and design talent and, combined with the right training and skills, they can move from talking and thinking about our society’s problems to taking innovative action to solve them.
“We hope that this competition will inspire young people to start developing their skills and ideas and maybe to eventually become product designers and engineers of the future.
“To make the competition as easy to enter as possible, entries can be in the form of a poster, video or web page – whichever they prefer. The judges will be looking for creative ideas that are well-communicated and that are really designed to solve the problem or meet the need the young designer has identified.”
Prizes of £100 will be awarded to four winners – best boys and girls in age categories 11-15 and 16-19. From those four, the overall Young Innovator of the Year will be selected, winning a £500 personal prize. The final prize of £300 will go to the school which has the highest standard of combined entries from all of their students when judged as a group.
For more information, including how to enter, visit www.harper.ac.uk/innovator
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