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ROBOFESTA AND THE OPEN UNIVERSITY

RoboFesta-UK is administered by the Open University. Members of OU staff sit on the international RoboFesta Committee, lead its organising committee in the UK, maintain its websites and provide administrative support.

The OU sponsors RoboFesta for several reasons:

  • The OU has a strong group researching the use of robotics in motivating study in Science, Engineering, and Technology (SET), and mathematics (STEM) education. It has published widely at international conferences, and participates in many international educational events.
  • The OU is a leading research centre in space and planetary robotics, astronomy and astrobiology. It recognises the tremendous potential of those subjects to inspire young people to pursue education and careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. It is therefore keen to promote outreach activities that exploit and develop interest in space robotics.
  • There is synergy between the OU's mission and the aims of RoboFesta and international competitions such as RoboCupJunior. The educational research feeds into the OU’s teaching, providing leading edge theory, practical experience, and topical case studies. RoboFesta’s outreach nature supports the University’s targets in recruiting and retaining students with low previous educational qualifications and from socially and economically deprived areas. For example, the new course T184: Robotics draws on the course team’s RoboFesta research, and is intended to draw new groups into technical education by providing attractive materials and hands-on robotics activities for home study.
  • The OU is widely regarded as a centre of excellence in robotics education and research, and is striving to ‘network the networks’ of other organisations to create a structure to support educational robotics events across the UK as part of RoboFesta-Europe in 2004. The OU has national infrastructure, making it well positioned to lead the RoboFesta initiative in the UK and Europe.



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