Robots playing football – who can resist?

Anyone going to the Royal Society’s Summer Exhibition this week should head over to the University of Edinburgh’s robotic soccer stand to meet the little guys in person. It’s Ingenious funded don’t you know?

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.

In the discover zone

I’ve just been having a wonder around the Discover zone, which, it turns out, is full of lots of engineering fun.

The lovely people over at the University of Southampton stand, for example, are looking into the science of bubbles. With the help of a big water tank, and some stethoscopes, they’re showing that bubbles can make a big difference to the types of sounds you hear underwater. Creating big bubbles in the water, for example makes everything more bassy (if that’s a word?) as the bubbles trap lower notes with longer wavelengths. For little bubbles the effect is reversed, and higher notes are trapped within.

The guy I was talking to actually works on airplane noises, trying to determine how to ensure the sounds they produce are pleasing to our ears, but he told me that by monitoring underwater sounds we can tell if nearby objects are friend or foe, simply depending on the size of bubbles they produce.

And Southampton wasn’t the only stand looking into engineering. GCHQ is challenging visitors to crack their cryptic codes, while another stand in the zone is dedicated to a materials version of monopoly. So whether you’re a child or not the zone’s well worth dropping into.

Heated discussions

Event number two for us at Cheltenham Science Festival yesterday was ‘Can we keep warm and still save the world’, a look at the ways we can keep our homes toasty and warm in an efficient way.

Joining engineer Roger Kemp was presenter Robert Llewellyn, who made his trip to the festival in an electric car powered by the solar panels on his house, giving us all something to aspire to. But as we found out during the discussions, becoming as green as Robert is not easy.

Roger explained that we’re facing what he liked to call a ‘trilemma’ – in this case trying to fulfill the climate change act, ensure affordability and energy security. While using renewables to power the heating in our homes is part of the solution to keeping warm and staying green, it’s not enough by itself and will become expensive, especially as we don’t often want to heat our homes the whole year round. The key is also to ensure our houses are well-equipped for the job, with adequate insulation, heating solutions and efficient design. But as many of the homes which will be use in 2050 have already been built, retrofitting may be the order of the day, and it’s not one size fits all.

For example Robert has insulated his house to within an inch of its life, filling his roof with so much insulation that there’s pretty much no empty space left. But as one audience member pointed out, with some older buildings, filling cavities leads to rot or damp. And, asked another, what happens if you don’t own the home you live in – how can you convince your landlord, who may not pay the heating bills, to invest in insulating your home?

As already mentioned in the wind debate, Roger stressed the importance of energy storage, especially if we face a future where our energy may be dependent on weather. He also highlighted the importance of developing a skilled workforce who are able to install technologies such as heat pumps as well as understand and decide in which situations and homes they should or should not be used.

But, when quizzed about keeping energy prices low, he stated there’s no such thing as fuel poverty, just poverty. And rather than thinking about reducing energy prices we should instead be looking to support those on low incomes in other ways, so they are able to better afford heating their homes through our cold winters (and summers).

All in all it was another great discussion. And for anyone looking for more info Roger has written a report about all the above points and more with the Academy which is up on the website for anyone to download and read.

An ill wind?

Day number one in Cheltenham and it’s certainly been a busy one – for the Academy at least. We’ve had not one, but two events this afternoon and if I say so myself they’ve both gone rather well, with loads of debate and discussion from the speakers and the audience.

Up first was our wind debate with engineer Andrew Garrad and environmentalist Jonathon Porritt arguing for the motion ‘Should Britain be a fan of wind energy’. Andrew and Jonathon stressed that, while they were proponents of wind energy, they saw wind as being part of the energy mix along with other renewables such as tidal, solar and hydroelectric. For Jonathon, Britain has no other choice but to be a fan of wind energy, as we try to move towards a future of energy efficiency and decarbonisation.

Taking the stand against the motion were energy policy analyst John Constable and writer and independent political researcher Ben Pile. Ben felt that we should have more democratisation in energy policy, and that wind power won’t lead to cheap, abundant energy, instead costing us more and delivering less. John argued that we’re simply not ready for wind power, which is currently technically primitive and very expensive.

Chairing the event, Vivienne Parry took to the audience to find out their thoughts on the topic, which were many and varied. Among the questions asked were how to incorporate wind with other energy sources, for those times when the weather isn’t so compliant. While speakers agreed that other energy sources will still be needed they pointed out that the holy grail would be to solve the energy storage problem.

All of the speakers agreed that energy is a political topic and in his introduction Andrew Garrad stated that security of supply is a big concern. He said that he felt wind could be a very British energy source, with wind turbines being developed, constructed and producing energy in and for the UK. Although some turbines now call for rare earth components such a neodymium, which have to be sourced from overseas, Andrew said that we don’t necessarily have to continue with these designs. But perhaps his killer argument was that a wind turbine with a design lifetime of about 15-20 years needs to run for only 9 months to recover the carbon costs taken to make it.

I’m afraid there was a LOT more discussion about the topic, particularly regarding subsidies and the need to redesign the grid to cope, but this is just a very quick run-down on the points I was able to note down. For anybody interested in a more complete version, a video of the event will be going up on the Academy website fairly soon.

I was planning to talk about our second event ‘Can we keep warm and still save the world’ too, but I’ll hold onto that for another post for fear of going on too long. But I’ll just end with two of the points made by John and Andrew when summing up at the end of tour wind debate today. We need to develop renewables under real world conditions, but we also need to start thinking about energy in a different way, as this could be the beginning of a whole new era.

And we’re off!

Today marks the start of the Cheltenham Science Festival – the place to be for any self-respecting science fan.

The Royal Academy of Engineering have been supporting events at the festival for a number of years now. Last year we had a whopping seven events, but this time we’re taking it a bit easier with just the three.

However that doesn’t mean we’re short of events to go to. Here’s a quick run down of our pick of the week:

3D Printing Live: Manufacturing the Future? | Tues 12 Jun, 2-3.15pm

Unfortunately I only arrive in Cheltenham tomorrow so am going to miss this one, but I’ll be keeping my eye on twitter and the blogosphere to find out how it goes. 3D printing appears to be all the rage at the moment, but just how useful is it for everyday life? Engineers Mark Williams and Richard Hague will tell us more.

Can science save the economy? | Tues 12 Jun, 6-7pm

Eminently topical, Richard Hague, Colin Sirett, Catherine Mulligan, Jim Godfrey and Vivienne Parry will be discussing the best way to balance spending across science and engineering. As an aside, Vivienne will also be appearing later on in the festival as chair of our wind debate.

Wind Power: The Great Debate | Wed 13 Jun, 12-1.15pm

A bit of a plug here as this is the first of our Academy events. But with engineer Andrew Garrad, environmentalist Jonathon Porritt, energy policy analyst John Constable and writer and independent political researcher Ben Pile, all on board it looks set to be a great discussion. I’ve also had a peek at some of their arguments and I think we’re in for a treat.

Can we keep warm and still save the world? | Wed 13 Jun 1.30-2.30pm

Plug #2. Engineer Roger Kemp and presenter Robert Llewellyn were fab when we brought them together to talk about electric cars two years ago. We’ve reunited them, but this time they’ll be discussing how to heat our homes the green way.

Music technology and the voice | Thu 14 Jun, 7.15-8.15pm

Beat boxing plus science. Need I say more?

Diagnosis: The Smart way? | Sat 17 Jun, 3.15-4.15pm

Taking a look at the future of medicine where electronics and automation could rule the roost.

Science Showoff | Sat 17 Jun, 7pm

Did you know there is a fringe festival at this year’s Cheltenham scifest? For anyone who’s missed the Science Showoff gigs in London, the team are heading west to showcase sci comm talent. Features engineers Oliver Broadbent and Ingenious-funded Jamie Gallagher (who by the way is also doing an energy show for kids on Sunday, but it appears to be sold out 😦 – though good job Jamie!).

Engineering For the Win! | Sun 17 Jun, 8.30-9.30pm

Last but not least, Matt Parker and Timandra Harkness will be closing the show with their new engineering-based comedy. Not entirely sure how this one’s going to pan out but I’m excited to find out.