Some of the youngest competitors at the 8th annual Robot Olympics, which attracted kids from 15 countries to the Gold Coast in December.
Credit: Jeni Bone
A robot archaeologist is poised to enter Egypt's largest pyramid, hoping to reveal thousand year old secrets without disturbing ancient and extremely fragile passageways. Surgery via robotics is being used every day for remote patients, in war and for elite athletes for whom recovery time is crucial.
"It's 50 times quicker, can reduce the number of people in an operating theatre from 13 to 5 and unlike human counterparts, machines are incredibly stable - they don't shake," says Turner.
RoboCup, an international project aimed at universities and industry to promote artificial intelligence and robotics, is another forum where fun is converted into practical applications for the future.
Organisers of RoboCup have chosen a soccer game as their focus of research, with the underlying aim of stimulating innovations that can be applied for socially significant problems and industries. The ultimate objective of the project is to develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world champion team in soccer, with a goal set for 2050.
For his part, Turner is a familiar fixture at the RoboCup challenges, having competed at several in the 'Four Legged League' soccer matches. In fact, he's World Champion in the Quadruped category and is part of the team developing a dog and a bear robot he hopes will be approved for general use in future events.
"Now that the Sony Aibo has ceased production, we thought it would be great to develop a dog - ours is a bulldog - and a bear for the Quadruped section. We have a proposal in with RoboCup to replace the Aibo with our versions and if we're successful, we'll be manufacturing them in Newcastle."
The decision will be handed down in July at the next RoboCup meeting in Atlanta, USA.
Back in Newcastle, Turner works with local school St James Kotara to introduce robots into classrooms. "It works particularly well with what they call 'disengaged kids' - children who are smart, but not interested or who have dropped behind. Robots have managed to re-motivate them, in all areas of their schoolwork. It's something different, it's challenging and it's fun."
The main obstacle to implementing robotics in the curriculum, according to Turner, is that "the curriculum doesn't fit it".
"We only have a few people here from Brisbane and the Gold Coast," observes Turner of the Robot Olympics. "Nobody travelled from other states or cities to be here."
The lack of Australians doesn't detract from the action, though, as spectators witness the fruits of many hours work from kids as young as seven, representing Mexico, Thailand, Singapore, Japan, Korea, China and Australia - in all, more than 600 students from 15 countries.
"The maths, science, IT and computer departments would have to work together and that just doesn't happen. It's generally held as after school classes, in clubs with teachers who volunteer their time. Until funding is made available, it's just not viable. Let's hope ... Australian schools get involved, add robots to their curriculum - get their science, maths and IT departments talking to each other."
For more information, check out the RoboCup and Tribotix websites
Jeni Bone is a freelance journalist based in the Gold Coast, Australia.
