What if robots could help us to walk?

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Suitable for 14-19-year olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom, STEM/robotics clubs and at home.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 Engineering and PSHE.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• This teaching resource explains the work of Dr Elliott Rouse from the University of Michigan, USA. A mechanical and biomedical engineer, he and his team in the Neurobionics Lab are using robotics and exoskeletons to help people with an amputation walk freely.

• This resource also contains an interview with Dr Elliott Rouse. If your students (or you) have questions for Dr Rouse, you/they can send them to him online. All you need to do is to go to the article online (see the Futurum link below), scroll down to the end and type in the question(s). Dr Rouse will reply!

• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on Dr Rouse’s research and challenges them to design a robot.

• The PowerPoint reiterates some of the points in the article.

This resource was first published on Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

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