On Wednesday the 19th of June, a group of girls from years 7, 8 and 9 attended a ‘Robogals’ conference at the Newcastle Jockey club. The conference focused on encouraging young women into STEM and the opportunities available to them. The special guest speaker for the conference was Marita Cheng, a founder of Robogals, who is dedicated to educating young people about STEM and engineering and is utilising STEM to develop programs to enhance peoples lives.
One of the programs Marita developed is “Aipoly” which is an Artificial Intelligence for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Aipoly is an app that uses Vision AI to recognise objects in real-time. This App she developed had 10,000 downloads within the first week. Another influential technology she developed is the “aubot”. The aubot is a remote-controlled robot that uses video call to allow you to be at two-places at once. The applications for this robot allow business owners to be at a range of their companies across the world, and it can be used in the medical industry allowing carers to check on family members at home.
She is now working on further applications of this technology to allow users to have a virtual reality experience through the robot and is working on technologies for a robotic arm.
The conference aimed to enhance student understanding of STEM applications and to reinforce the theme of perseverance. Marita’s advice for the young women of today, is to find a mentor to help guide and develop your projects and to keep learning, growing and developing.
Julia Nolan, Teaching and Learning Coordinator, Science
