ISR-Lisboa / LARSyS / IST-ID are organising once again a Summer programme in partnership with Ciência Viva addressed to high school students. This initiative is carried out since 2000 but this year, for the first time, the organisation team decided to put the young people in contact with robots, in space environment. “As far as we know, this is the only initiative at national level focused on space robotics”, explains professor Rodrigo Ventura, from the organisation team.
The programme combines and stimulates mathematics, programming and robotics. Students are challenged to simulate SPHERES robots developed by MIT and NASA operating at the International Space Station (ISS). In addition, the participants had the opportunity to visit ISR-Lisboa laboratories.
Catarina Jones, a 17-year-old student who is expecting to enter Técnico this year to study Aerospace Engineering is one of the participants: “I am having a great time. I have learnt a lot of things and I hope that, in a few years, I will be able to build a real satellite”, she said.
According to professor Rodrigo Ventura, more than 62 young people applied this year and “the vacancies were filled very early”. João Marques came all the way from Évora to participate in this initiative. “I have been participating in several programmes like this but I wanted to try out this one at IST this year”, explains the 17-year-old boy. “I had learnt and tried to do so many new things that I couldn’t like this more”, says João Marques.
The main purpose of this initiative is “to disseminate robotics as an engineering area that also includes geometry, physics and programming, providing a hands-on approach to robot programming”, explains professor Rodrigo Ventura. But it also allows students to prepare themselves, if they wish, to compete at Zero Robotics, an annual international competition addressed to high school students, where teams program the SPHERES to solve a challenge and finalists are selected to compete in a live championship aboard the ISS. According to professor Rodrigo Ventura “most of these students are extremely motivated to apply to Técnico”.
