High-Tech Hounds: lucky UTC Swindon students learn hands-on computing skills with £70,000 robot dog
UTC Swindon’s lucky computer science students have been learning exceptional hands-on skills this month with a fantastic series of lessons using a donated robot dog. Students have been testing their programming skills by teaching themselves to operate “Spot” with no instruction manual, figuring out how to make it walk upstairs, open doors and patrol the corridors.
Once they’d cracked the coding, they moved on to debating the ethical, moral and legal aspects of robots and their roles in our society, a crucial part of both the GCSE and A Level Computer Science courses. They have considered the role “Spot” could play in school and in various workplaces, using its camera or other accessories for security, or to monitor changes in buildings, thinking about the impact of this on existing jobs, or on the health and safety of workers. They also discovered how differently people within the school react to the dog, with some enthusiastically embracing the new technology and others more cautious.
Jamie, a year 13 computer science student, said:
“I can’t believe we got to programme Spot and figure out for ourselves how to make it work. It was great fun and really helpful for the course; although seeing it move around the school did worry some of my friends as it looks so unusual.”
Byron Calderwood, computer science teacher and assistant headteacher, said:
“Our students are incredibly lucky to get the chance to work on Spot; I can’t imagine any other schools have a robot dog on hand to learn these vital hands-on skills. Our students make the most of this opportunity and it will really help them in the written parts of their exams in the summer”.
Generously donated by Yondr, a world-leading data centre company and part of the school’s Digital Futures Programme, working with “Spot” is now a fixed part of our computer science lessons, and it steals the show at our open events.
