A group of our Year 8 students were invited to experience the world of self-driving vehicles in a LEGO Robotics workshop run by the Bournemouth University STEM outreach team.

The first phase of any autonomous vehicle system would be to design a robot to follow given instructions accurately and safely which was the challenge for our teams. Bournemouth University student ambassadors guided our students through the tasks.

Using their programming skills, students had to get their robots to manoeuvre around a selection of items. Year 8 students were challenged to produce solutions for an autonomous world. They worked through the challenges with great success and were awarded various prizes for speed and accuracy. The skills highlighted are those that will become more and more important as we increasingly rely on robots in the future. With drones looking like they will deliver everything we need in the future, maybe one of these students could be leading the way!

The Bournemouth University student ambassadors gave presentations on their courses at university, their aspirations, and other gems of insight into the world of further education, showing our students where STEM subjects might take them in the future.   

“Really fun session. All of the tasks we completed were a challenge, but they didn't make it impossible. What I liked was that they did teams of 2 all competing against each other and the clock. It was really fun, and I think everyone enjoyed it.” - Year 8 Student