This morning I programmed a Lego Mindstorm EV3 robot with code received from students at Nhulunbuy High School. The idea is to have a Lego EV3 robot sense an area of ground covered in the BushBlitz expedition to investigate technology surrounding remote sensing and data acquisition.

The robot was dropped into the location with the assistance of Year 10 students studying physics, who designed and constructed a suitable parachute as part of their laboratory work this semester.

Students have been experimenting with code that will allow a robot to move around its environment using some ultrasonic sensors and detect obstacles such as rocks, trees and dead fall. NASA uses robots in a similar way to explore distant planets and asteroids and perhaps one day life beyond the stars.

The BushBlitz expedition is an excellent way to incorporate multiple disciplines into the the study of flora, fauna and ecology, in this case robotics and maybe one day we will see robot botanists exploring remote worlds in the same way real life botanists explore our own.