Only for adults

The trainers don’t just look cool, they also help the robot to grip and stay upright

Yesterday I went on a walk around the Discover zone here at Cheltenham Science Festival. Today it’s the turn of Area 42.

Situated in a tent out the back of the town hall Area 42 is essentially the Discover Zone for adults. The stands here cover a range of science including the aurora, medical devices and some pretty horrible looking rotten fish.

Slightly less engineering in here than in Discover but I did manage to spot some very cute robots over at the Plymouth University stand, which were doing an impressive array of flips and handstands. The demonstrators from the uni were telling me about some of the competitions they were planning to enter the robots in – which will involve them having to negotiate around obstacles unaided.

In fact there’s a chance the team may come up against the robots being developed by the University of Edinburgh, who have recently been awarded an Ingenious grant. The Edinburgh team are also heading to the Royal Society Summer Exhibition this July, so for anyone who can’t make it to Area 42, you can catch up with some different, but probably equally exciting, robots there.