大象传媒

This week, Quentin goes to the University of Bath to meet science students who鈥檝e signed up for the Open University鈥檚 鈥淭echnology in Action鈥� course.

鈥淭echnology in Action鈥� is a week-long residential course. During the week, the students get hands-on experience of five areas where technology is playing a leading role in our lives: monitoring water quality, energy conversion, bridge building, waste management and robotics.

Quentin joins students on the robotics course. The course tutor is Jon Rosewell. Jon is a Lecturer in Information and Communication Technologies in the Faculty of Technology at the Open University.

Jon sets the students a challenging task. They have to design a rescue robot that can work in a hazardous environment.

Using Lego Mindstorm, the students first have to equip their robot with light and touch sensors. They then have to programme their robot to find 鈥淭ed the Led鈥�, a small teddy bear hidden in a side alley in a large, covered box.

Quentin also talks to Professor Chris Melhuish, Director of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL). BRL is one of the UK鈥檚 leading robotics research centres. Chris tells Quentin about some of BRL鈥檚 current research projects. These include robotic autonomy and the interface between robots and humans. Chris is also developing a robot called 鈥淲hiskerbot鈥�. 鈥淲hiskerbot鈥� uses artificial whiskers to mimic the way rats assess their environment.