Fruit-pickers could soon be a thing of the past with robots taking over their job.

That is just one of the challenges taken on by some of Queensland’s brightest Year 11 students.

Gabrielle Copp reports.

TRANSCRIPT

The five-day science camp, ‘STEM’, is being held at the Queensland University of Technology.

The main challenge for the week, programming robots to pick fruit.

Sarah Baldwin, Student: “Well you have to use code, so straight code, putting it into the program, and there’s a lot of trial and error. So you program it, see if it works, take out what doesn’t work, try again.”

And a lot of it is doing just that.

Trying, trying, and trying again.

Throughout the week, students have been working on 16 different robotic projects.

It’s fun, but there’s a serious point to all the activity.

Today’s challenge is part of a bigger project being undertaken by researchers at the university to improve productivity in the agricultural industry.

Organisers hope the camp will motivate students to think about a future career in the field of robotics.

Chris Lehnert, Associate Lecturer, Robotics: “As we interact with all our phones and devices, all the technology, robots will just be another technology that we’ll be familiar with and get used to.”

Gabrielle Copp, QUT News.