daVinci@SUTD Experience
The STEAMxD workshop (STEAM = Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics, and D = Design Thinking) is transdisciplinary in its nature and structured as a designette wherein participants are provided with a design brief containing an opportunity statement, workshop narrative, deliverables, rubrics, and metrics. A pilot run was carried out in January 2022 with a total of 46 pre-university students participating in the Drone Technologies track, while in January 2023 the number of participants increased to 96 students, participating in both Drone Technologies and AI Rescue Robots tracks. In January 2024, 103 students will be participating in both tracks as scholars of the MOE sponsored Engineering and Tech Programme Scholarship (ETPS).
Students applied a design systems approach, which includes human-centric socio-historical, cultural context, technology (STEM), and design thinking. The human-centric design developed a narrative of the workshop to highlight the humanistic component of the design challenge. The technological component ensured the transferring of abilities through a series of workshops to enable the participants to prototype appropriate solutions, while design thinking provided design tools to find potential solutions, but, most importantly, bridged the other two components to drive the programme towards a collaborative outcome.
View the videos of the past workshops here:
2022 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Xv9idDVUko
2023 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqcp6WBSd0E
AI Rescue Robots Track
In the 5-day programme, each day is separated into 2 sessions (AM and PM) for the purpose of providing abilities-transferring training workshops. The participants are introduced to a design brief wherein the programme track is titled “Rescue Operation at a Disaster Area using Robots Equipped with Artificial Intelligence Image Recognition Technology.” In addition, participants are introduced to a workshop scenario where students take the role of SUTD entrepreneurs (TECH NGO) undergoing a series of training workshops to rapidly acquire competencies needed to deploy a comprehensive person and pets robot rescue operation at a disaster area.
Finally, participants are expected to develop a problem scenario, which includes deliverables for day 5:
- an AI-equipped robot challenge with its metrics, and
- a storyboard 3-min pitch with its rubrics.
Drone Technologies Track
In the 5-day programme, each day is separated into 2 sessions (AM and PM) for the purpose of providing abilities-transferring training workshops. The participants are introduced to a design brief wherein the programme track is titled “Covid-19 Vaccine Cargo Airdropped to an Isolated Village Using Drones.” In addition, participants are introduced to a workshop scenario where students take the role of SUTD entrepreneurs (TECH NGO) undergoing a series of training workshops to rapidly acquire competencies needed to deploy a comprehensive cargo delivery service to remote areas.
Finally, participants are expected to develop a problem scenario, which includes deliverables for day 5:
- a drone challenge with its metrics, and
- a storyboard 3-min pitch with its rubrics.
