The Discovery Voyager team are fortunate to have the support of Telstra in our endeavours to take innovative experiences in STEAM to students around northern NSW. We use technology provided by Telstra – beebots, spheros and dash robots – to teach concepts of coding. We also introduce the idea that automation can be useful in environments that are inaccessible or inhospitable to humans, like the deep sea or on Mars, or where efficiencies are time and money saving, like in factories and on farms.

The UNE Discovery Voyager team have joined Telstra at AgQuip for three years running to demonstrate and provide these activities to visitors. And this year we had some whizz bang new robot mat environments to showcase! Voyager team member Will Smidt created Mars, the deep sea, a farm, inside the blood stream, and inside a factory for participants in our BusyBots activity to explore.

We were able to challenge children as young as 6 years old to check fences on the farm using simple instructions to their Beebot, and parents to conduct many complex tasks on farm before parking their Beebot in the shed backwards!  In the bloodstream, coders had to clear viruses and suspicious cells and clots from the arteries with dash robots that were medical nanobots. It opened up discussions about current research into nanoparticles inside the human body to search and destroy disease causing agents.

We are grateful that Telstra provides these occasions to engage with different audiences and discussions. AgQuip allows us an insight into the lives and foci of people cultivating and caring for the land; the people responsible for producing the food, fibre and forests for those in Australia and overseas. Learning through these different perspectives is a valuable tool for us in providing rounded and fulsome experiences for school students and teachers around NSW.

Thanks Telstra and AgQuip – see you next year!