Robotic workshops for youngsters in Fribourg at blueFACTORY, EPFL FR

In a blueFACTORY meeting room, youngsters from Canton de Fribourg participated during 11 Saturdays to activities to handle robots. Lots of curiosity and enthusiasm was shared during these training weeks. Four EPFL students helped them build up and program their robots. The Centre fri-tic* lent its laptops for this project. Workshops have ambitious content that young scientists fulfil with great pleasure and high satisfaction. This experience started in fall 2016 in Fribourg and meets with great success: courses are quickly full everywhere they are proposed: Canton de Fribourg, Vaud, Jura, Bern and Valais.

Today autonomous vehicles and drones make robotics very popular among youths. During 11 weeks, kids have to build up a robot and program it to behave with specific goals. Therefore they have to understand the use of the various robot captors and how they should work in order to meet the challenges.

To encourage even more girls to go on scientific fields and become tomorrow engineers, a “girl only” workshop is dedicated to them. Content is absolutely similar to boys’ one; but girls like to register when it is addressed to them specifically. They are motivated by the perspective of working together with other girls. Even if numbers are increasing women remain a minority in engineering and scientific fields. It is thus important to address girls before scholar choices. Workshops aim at giving opportunities to get hints into fields that girls and boys may not know well and at creating vocations. 

Saturday 24^th June, 46 youngster received a certificate from Anne-Claude Cosandey – Operational Director of the EPFL Fribourg Outpost and Farnaz Moser - Director of the EPFL Science Outreach Department. On that day BlueFACTORY became a lab where kids made robotics demos and explained to their parents the workshop projects. Indeed, last three Saturdays were dedicated to specific projects, such as building and programming a robot that can 1) “hand” a pencil and make up specific drawings, 2) race, increasing or decreasing speed and avoiding obstacles 3) or even a “dog robot” behaving as such. Patience, steadiness and team work are, in addition to technical knowledge, some other qualities kids had to develop. With these workshops, EPFL Fribourg actively participates to foster the younger generation of scientists!

*Competence Centre responsible for all media, information and communication technologies (MITIC) for education in Canton de Fribourg.