The Remote³ project is aimed at S1-S3 students in 10 Scottish high schools. The plan is to have one team, of 4-6 students, from each school design, build and programme a miniature Mars Rover which will then be sent to the Boulby Underground Laboratory to explore the STFC Mars Yard located 1.1 km deep underground. We will provide all the components necessary to build a working Mars explorer, have an induction afternoon in person at the school to explain the challenges and provide training and support in the use of the equipment and programming of the rovers. We will also provide a dedicated contact person from the University who will be on hand to resolve any questions or querys which might arise. The 10 schools will then send their Mars rovers to Boulby Underground Laboratory and control them remotely on competition day with the challenge to complete the most number of tasks in a given amount of time.

Schools in Scotland was closed due to COVID-19 so we have had to temporarily put the robot project on hold.  We are staying in close communication with the participating schools and will restart the project if and when the circumstances permit. In the meantime we have moved our outreach program online with weekly coding challenges designed to be worked on individually or as part of a team using Scratch collaborations. New challenges are set weekly and the participants have seven days to design code to complete the task and then show their creation the subsequent week.