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Robotics Stars of the Future Visit Vauxhall Motors for Inspiration

2012-02-02

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The Robotics Team - bright young talent from Prenton High School for Girls, recently visited Vauxhall Motors’ Ellesmere Port Plant for some robotics inspiration The visiting girls were the school’s new robotics recruits and their senior teammates have represented the UK with distinction on the world stage at the Robocup Robotics World Finals in Shanghai 2008, Austria 2009, Singapore 2010 and Istanbul 2011 ; and they have been the ‘Best Team in the UK’, and the ‘Best Girls' Team in the World’ for five successive years.

Tony Francavilla, Plant Director, who joined the girls for lunch in the afternoon, said:’ It was a real pleasure to welcome such an enthusiastic group to the Plant. It’s great to see talented young women interested in robotics and engineering”.

During their visit the girls were taken through their paces by Mike Wilkes, Body Shop Maintenance Team Leader. Wasting no time Mike had them programming some of the robots in the Body Shop to maintain and ensure their fine and continuous movements, as well as allowing the girls to experiment with increasing the robots movement speeds and repetition of tasks.

Mike was impressed with the girls saying: “Robots initially look very daunting; “They’re big scary pieces of machinery. I took the fear away by throwing the girls in at the deep end.  Young people tend to pick up technology embarrassingly quickly and the girls were no exception, they performed the programming tasks with ease.”

In the afternoon, the team were given a guided tour around the Body Unit and General Assembly Unit to see the variety of robots we use on site in action. This included the plant’s welding, sealing, sequencing and laser measuring robots, to name but a few.

Impressed by the Plant’s production process, Team Member Rachel Jack announced after the plant tour:“I will never look at a car in the same way again, it was amazing”

Tom Flannery, the girls Robotics Tutor summarised the day by saying:"The girls have had a great day and a good opportunity to see the various opportunities manufacturing can offer them.  I am sure Vauxhall has inspired some budding engineers."

Everyone at the Vauxhall Motors Ellesmere Port Plant wishes the girls all the best for their campaign to represent the UK at the Robotics World Finals in Mexico City later this year.