Plymouth University's first female robot footballer to receive a makeover as part of Engineering Education Scheme

A team of year 12 students from Plymouth High School for Girls have been tasked with giving Plymouth University’s star robot footballer Eva a makeover, as part of a national effort to engage more young people in the engineering profession. Plymouth University set the challenge as part of its involvement with the Engineering Development Trust (EDT) who organise the nationally-run Engineering Education Scheme. The scheme challenges teams of year 12 students from schools across the country to come up with solutions to a number of genuine scientific, engineering and technological problems suffered by businesses within their region. Plymouth University set their team the challenge of designing a new face, hair and voice for the county’s favourite robot footballer, Eva, and also invited pupils from the South West’s eight participating schools onto campus to develop proposed solutions to companies’ problems, including designing a carbon footprint measuring system and coming up with a way to move blocks under ships in dry docks. Each of the teams spent three days working with technicians from Plymouth University’s Schools of Marine Science and Engineering and Computing and Mathematics, and were given the opportunity to create working prototypes of their ideas using the University’s state-of-the-art 3D printer. Steve Edmonds, Technical Manager at Plymouth University’s School of Marine Science and Engineering, said: “On their first day here the students had to decide how to solve their given problems and ask our technicians to help them source the equipment they needed to make prototypes of their ideas.