Ask yourself:

1.  What do I want to learn?

2. What do I already know?

Then:

3.  Devise a project you’re interested in that involves others

- Create a community

- Have a clear common aim

- Work towards external deadlines

 

1. What do I want to learn?

Figure out what you want to learn or the challenge or goal you want to conquer.

When I was in my second year at university, I had never built a robot from scratch before. I’d done soldering, built electronic crickets from kits, soldered together a multimeter, put together various toy cars, and built a whole bunch of stuff with LEGO robots − but I’d never built my own robot from scratch! So I decided that I was going to build a simple robot to roll around the room by itself with my friends. We called the team “mew”, after our names.

 

2. What do I already know?

Learning something new is hard. So you want to make sure there aren’t too many obstacles between you and success. It’s good to be aware of your strengths and weaknesses so you can ask for help when you need it and ensure the project’s success.

My friends and I didn’t know much about building robots, so we breadboarded some motors and LEDs, but we didn’t achieve our objective. I then got busy building Robogals and studying in London. I next decided to build a word clock, which tells the time using words rather than digits. There weren’t as many tutorials on word clocks back then, so I asked my housemate Luke, an enthusiastic electronics hacker, to help guide me through the process. I bought a whole bunch of components from the electronics markets to make my own circuit boards.

 

3. Devise a project you’re interested in that involves others

− Create a community

Doing things by yourself is lonely. Getting other people on board creates energy around the project and makes it more exciting. It’s nice to bounce ideas off other people, brainstorm and refine ideas to come to the optimal solution, while making friends. To ensure your project gets completed, create a community around it. That might be just one person, your best friend who is curious or the local hacking community you find at Hackerspace.

I didn’t have much time to work on my word clock, before getting busy with university. Thankfully, we finally started doing some hands-on robot building in my mechatronics engineering and computer science course. We were going to compete in the Warman Challenge, where you build two devices − one completely mechanical, and one electro-mechanical − to complete a task. It was a group project, so I worked with a few classmates, and we finished the university assignment!

− Have a clear common aim

Be clear about what you want to achieve. Talk to as many people as possible about your idea. Refine it as much as possible. Then agree on the scope of the project with your team.

A month later, my friend forwarded me an email about ABC’s New Inventors, a tv show that showcases Australian inventions and innovations. The producers were filming a “Robot Special” episode. They were looking for sumo robots to compete against different universities around Australia. I quickly emailed back, putting my hand up to enter a team with Luke.

− Work towards external deadlines

By having an external deadline, the project gets done. This way, it’s not just the team holding you to account to complete the project, but other people in the wider community as well. This causes you to step up and deliver.

Less than two months later, I was a panellist on the ABC’s New Inventors and our robot competed and tied for third place. If we didn’t have the hard deadline of the filming date, we wouldn’t have completed our sumo robot.

 

With the hardware skills gained from working on these projects, I had the confidence to build more robots and then start my own robotics company, aubot, making telepresence robots for people to go to school or work remotely.

Competitions like Shell Eco-Marathon enable you to learn valuable hands-on skills, create a community for you to work with towards a clear common aim and give you an external deadline so the project gets completed. When people ask me how they can learn these kinds of valuable skills − technical, project management, teamwork, leadership, etc − I tell them to look for competitions like Shell Eco-Marathon.