{"id":1730,"date":"2020-05-13T09:45:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-13T08:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/engineering\/?p=1730"},"modified":"2020-05-13T10:07:24","modified_gmt":"2020-05-13T09:07:24","slug":"making-mud-powered-robots-for-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/engineering\/making-mud-powered-robots-for-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"Making mud-powered robots for schools"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In October, FET awarded the team at the Bioenergy Centre a public engagement and outreach award. The Centre are using this fund to support the production of an interactive workshop for schools &#8211; Mud powered robots!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Research Associate Pavlina Theodosiou, who led the project until her move to Newcastle University in January, provides an update here on this exciting workshop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Before Christmas,&nbsp;Pavlina worked hard alongside electronics engineer technician, Ugnius Barajunas, to obtain quotes from various companies for the prototype motors &#8211; the most expensive part of the robot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the same time, the two assembled different electronic boards with the 3D printed parts and borrowed motors, to create three robots. The robots&nbsp;were tested with live Microbial FuelCells in the lab and ran well on urine (but don&#8217;t worry, they won&#8217;t be run on urine in school!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They presented their results at the a best-in-class overview of robotics and automation, which BotTalks&nbsp;hosted at the watershed in November. The team are now&nbsp;excited about trialling the robots&nbsp;on mud for the first time!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>&#8220;Overall the project received a lot of interest from public and investors at&nbsp;BotTalks.&#8221;<\/p><cite>Pavlina<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Bot-Talks 2019 | Bristol BioEnergy | Robotics Interview with Pavlina Theodosiou and Ugnius Bajarunas\" width=\"840\" height=\"473\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xsMR-BNZ93c?start=18&#038;feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><figcaption>Pavlina and Ugnius&nbsp;speak about the importance of bringing these scientific&nbsp;discoveries to schools to help children get interested in STEM <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Later in the year, the workshop will be taken into Sea Mills Primary School for the Year 6s to get stuck into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In October, FET awarded the team at the Bioenergy Centre a public engagement and outreach award. The Centre are using this fund to support the production of an interactive workshop for schools &#8211; Mud powered robots! Research Associate Pavlina Theodosiou, who led the project until her move to Newcastle University in January, provides an update &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/engineering\/making-mud-powered-robots-for-schools\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Making mud-powered robots for schools&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":1756,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,108,24,18,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-awards","category-bristol-robotics-laboratory","category-outreach","category-schools","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1730"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1878,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730\/revisions\/1878"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}