Profile

I am a relatively new type of engineer called a roboticist. I have to be able to work with computers, software, machines and all the bits in between. I currently work in defence on a large military communications project. It’s a bit like building our own personal internet! It has all the components of the existing internet but allows us to send very personal information without anyone else being able to listen in.

I don’t really have a “typical” day, that’s what I love about being an engineer so much. Because roboticists are still quite new to mainstream engineering, a lot of the people I work with don’t really understand what it is that I do! This is a bonus because it gives me a lot of freedom to define my job role. And who wouldn’t want to have that sort of freedom at work! Some of the most enjoyable days are when an unexpected problem crops up and we all have to use our skills to solve it.

I would love to create a really fun robotics program to run in schools. Robotics isn’t just about building a little buggy and then programming it to follow a line on the floor! The true power and usefulness of robotics is when it is put to work solving some tasks that needs to be done. I would design a session where children identify something that a robot could do (better!) in their school. This could be a robot that recognises the faces of people as they enter the school and allows us to track who is in the building – very good for security. This is called “Computer Vision” and it is a bit part of robotics. This is just an example but I would like the children to suggest what they want to see a robot do in their school.