University News Last updated 28 June 2010
Eco-warrior robots are going to be let loose around a Birmingham school in order to monitor the amount of energy the building uses.
Three members of staff from Birmingham City University’s Faculty of Technology, Engineering and the Environment will be collaborating with a local primary school on an exciting project funded by the prestigious Royal Society entitled “Roving Robot Energy Monitors”.
Professor Sharon Cox, Dr. Jan Krasniewicz and David While will be providing technical advice and support to primary school staff in the use of energy monitoring equipment and robots. The project will involve the whole of Year 6 at Ferndale Primary School in Great Barr, Birmingham, who will be engaged in designing and building robots based around the LEGO® Mindstorms® NXT kit. These robots will rove around the school monitoring the environment.
Alongside this the pupils will be monitoring the whole school’s electricity consumption as well as identifying the electricity consumption of individual items. The pupils will then present the information to the rest of the school and identify ways in which energy consumption could be reduced. David While, a Senior Academic in the Faculty said: “This is an exciting project for us to be involved with. One of our research areas is involved with smart technology for home automation and energy monitoring. This project allows us to broaden our work and provides us with valuable data for future research.”
Nigel Edge, Headteacher at Ferndale Primary School said "We are very excited to be involved in a collaborative ECO project with Birmingham City University. The children are very enthusiastic at the thought of monitoring the power usage at the school. The innovative way of building, controlling and interrogating Robots to do this has made the children feel that they are at the forefront of research.
“The fact that they are working closely with the university staff has given the project a status above that of the everyday primary curriculum and we expect the outcomes to reflect this in the children's learning.”
The project will start with a full day activity on 6 July at Ferndale Primary School where the pupils will be introduced to the project and spend some time building robots and testing them. The project will run until May 2011.