I recently had the privilege to attend the AISNSW DigiSTEM Conference, “Wired Up and Unplugged”, at UTS (University of Technology Sydney) with Zac Silber and our Technology and Applied Studies Teacher, Mrs Steel.
My job was to help present an iSTEM unit we were taught earlier this year where we were tasked with creating a robot that could automatically water plants, aptly named “HerbBot”. “HerbBot” was a Project Based Learning unit developed by Codecamp and Masada. I talked about the many challenges our group faced while creating our machine. Some of these challenges were trying to solve the issues of friction in the mechanism and programming the code to ensure effective watering of the plants.
We had a great day at UTS; we attended talks from virtual reality, science, technology and STEM enthusiasts. We had a tour around the UTS campus and saw many of their great engineering facilities as well as an underground system made to store and retrieve books for their library that was part of a $1.5 billion expansion on their campus. We also saw a robot designed by Honours Mechatronic students that was made to take images of parts of the Sydney Harbour bridge where humans or other robots can’t get to. I had a very enjoyable time at UTS learning about different types of engineering and STEM. I hope to visit again in the future.
– Brandan Rudick Year 9
iSTEM student
iSTEM student
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