Danielle George to be recognised for public promotion of engineering

Project to build a robot orchestra will tour the UK this year

Professor Danielle George is to receive this year’s Rooke Award for the public promotion of engineering.

Previous winners of the award, which recognises people who have brought engineering to life for the public include TV presenters Johnny Ball and Adam Hart-Davis. Last year’s winner, engineer, TV presenter and author Professor Mark Miodownik, will present this year's award at the Academy Awards Dinner at the Tower of London.

George, who is professor of Microwave Communication Engineering at the University of Manchester is running a project this year to crowd-source a robot orchestra this year. The orchestra will be made up of around 50 robots built from recycled electronics and scrap and will debut in Manchester in July, after which it will tour the UK.

The robot orchestra is a larger and more ambitious version of the pilot that Professor George assembled for her 2014 Royal Institution Christmas Lecture ‘How to hack your home,’ broadcast on BBCFour. She is encouraging people to get involved through a citizens’ engineering project with primary and secondary school groups and individuals, mainly around Manchester. Each team will make their own robot to play a particular part in the orchestra.

Siemens is building a special robot conductor to keep the other robots to time. The Halle Orchestra has composed a special piece of music for the robot orchestra’s launch and will provide eight members of the orchestra to perform the music live alongside the robots. George will also take her ‘How to hack your home’ lecture on tour later this year, funded by the Royal Academy and the Royal Institution.

George said: “We are effectively trying to deliver an engineering project via crowd-sourcing. It’s definitely taking me out of my comfort zone. However, that’s a good thing, because that’s when we’re at our most creative. We want to showcase everyone’s work – from five-year-old primary school children working together to the 75-year-old tinkering in their garage – and to celebrate the fantastic failures that allow us to develop our skills and creativity. I want to show how everyone can discover the secret engineer inside themselves - and build an amazing machine from their imagination.”