'Really great opportunity': ECS principal excited for new robotics program

Estevan Comprehensive School is at the centre of a new artificial intelligence initiative called Estevan Robotics, with the school joining forces with the Southeast Techhub and Revelation Engineering to build a bipedal robot.

"I think as teachers and staff, we're always looking for cool opportunities to engage and spark interest in students, and connect them with something that is going to be useful in their future," said ECS Vice-Principal James Jones. "We're really excited about the opportunity to have computer science, machining, drafting, computer design, even some of our mechanical and automotive classes, or even entrepreneurship could have an involvement in this."

"I think this is a really great opportunity for our students to not only receive that high quality education that's going to equip them for jobs maybe outside of Estevan, but we know that those skills could be in demand right here in the Energy City," he said.

Jones added that there will be a collective effort within the school to build the robot.

"The hope is that we can work collaboratively with multiple classes at different grade levels to actually work through the building, programming, kind of development of this robot," Jones said. "Being able to use those partnerships with the Techhub and Revelation Engineering to provide some guidance and direction to help support the staff."

"But yeah, we're hoping to be able to do a lot of it right here at ECS."

Jones said he had a general idea of how many students will be involved initially.

"Immediately we have a computer science class at the 20-30 level that will be directly involved with the programming, and that program here at ECS is definitely growing in numbers and popularity," he said. "From a numbers count, I would say we have 20 to 30 students probably that are going to be directly impacted or involved, but it'll go into more classes...we might have multiple students in a drafting class that could help out."

"Hard to give a a specific number there, but I would say we'll probably grow as it goes on."