MIT Challenge 2 – Year 8 & 9 Street Smarts Report

Introduction

Through our collaboration with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, students in Year 8 and 9 have been tackling real-world challenges across the subjects of science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics (STEAM). The latest in school challenge asked students to consider the imminent introduction of autonomous vehicles on our cities roads.

Some of the questions that the students considered were as follows.

• How do autonomous vehicles see the road? 
• What will driving be like in the future? 
• How safe will they be?
• Who is to blame if an accident occurs?

Students were focused on building two types of autonomous vehicle as well as 3D models of villages and cities to illustrate how they imagine it looking in the future. Vehicles included Lego Mindstorms, infra-red collision detection cars as well as line followers.

As part of the challenge, they also discussed and use the moral machine, an MIT designed platform for gathering a human perspective on moral decisions made by machine intelligence.  This challenge took place throughout the second term during Friday science lessons and ended with each class presenting their ideas to the entire year group. 

Well done Year 8 and Year 9!  With such imaginative, creative and intelligent research and manufacturing, the future of our roads is in good hands!

Please see some photos and video of our students in action.

Mr. David Wheeler

Head of Science