UK Robotics Week 2019 - Small equipment grant for outreach activity

Between the 24th and 28th of June 2019 we will be running a robotics workshop at Hatfield Community Free School with approximately 240 children, aged between 7 and 11, for UK Robotics Week 2019. During this week two researchers from the University of Hertfordshire’s Adaptive Systems Research Group will attend the school for 5 days to teach the children about the different aspects of robotics, including construction and programming of robots. All of the children from year group 3 and above in the school will be given the opportunity to gain first-hand experience of working with robots and programming them. The event will be designed to both educate and inspire young children of primary school age to pursue a career in engineering and computer science. We ran a similar event to this at the school in 2018 which was a huge success and also gained some local media attention, which is why the school have invited us to repeat a similar event for 2019.

Purpose of requested funding
The funding requested in this application will be used to purchase 15 robotic arms and required accessories that will be used during this Robotics Week event. We will need 15 robotic arms because we plan to split the classes into groups of 15 children, each of which will use a robotic arm. We will use the robotic arms for the children to learn about programming and see how programming can be used to physically operate robots to perform tasks. In this event we plan for the children to program the robot arms to pick up and move boxes, thus grasping the basic principles of the steps required to achieve this. At the end of the week the school will keep the equipment purchased with this grant to use for years to come in order to continue teaching the children about robotics.