These Prototypes are going to be awarded Bronze, Silver or Gold Medals at the Primary Engineer MacRobert Medal Award Ceremony in November, but there is one more thing being awarded – The Commendation Medal. 

VOTING IS NOW CLOSED! Results will be announced on November 19th live at the Primary Engineer MacRobert Medal Award Ceremony.

These prototypes came from the ideas of school pupils who answered the question “If you were an engineer, what would you do?” as part of Primary Engineer’s Leaders Award Competition.

These ideas have been brought to life by talented young engineers who have worked hard to turn these ideas into real, working Prototypes. By voting, you’ll not only help recognise the hard work of these engineers but also celebrate the creativity and ingenuity of the school pupils whose designs sparked these projects. 

Voting will be open until Friday November 15th, and the winner will be announced at the Primary Engineer MacRobert Medal Award Ceremony on November 19th.

Voting has closed but you can see all the Medallists below.

Meet the Teams, Pupils and Prototypes

Clean Water Access Bot

ProtoTeam: GKN Aerospace

Pupil: Ben, Year 5

Description: The Clean Water Access Bot (C.W.A.B) is a solar-powered vehicle that autonomously collects, purifies, and delivers clean water from remote sources to areas with limited access, aiming to provide safe drinking water to underserved communities.

Switch-a-Boot

ProtoTeam: Manchester Metropolitan University

Pupil: Noah, Year 6 

Description: The Switch-A-Boot is a versatile football boot concept with interchangeable outer soles, allowing athletes to adapt to various playing surfaces while reducing costs, enhancing sustainability, and supporting a circular economy by minimizing waste and improving recyclability through easy disassembly

Moving Solar Panel

ProtoTeam: Queens University Belfast 

Pupil: Sam, Year 6

Description: The Moving Solar Panel enhances the utility of photovoltaic (PV) systems on non-optimally oriented rooftops by using a mounting system that allows panels to shift positions, maximizing solar energy capture on east-west facing roofs, despite potential cost challenges; it explores innovative flipping and tracking designs to improve efficiency and aligns with UN Sustainable Development Goal. 

Self Regulation Bracelet

ProtoTeam: University of Sunderland 

Pupil: Zoeya, Year 3 

Description: The Self Regulation Bracelet is designed to improve communication in classrooms for neurodivergent students by using a button-activated system that provides visual responses through colored lights, offering a discrete and impactful solution for enhancing interactions between students, peers, and teachers.

Smart Tap

ProtoTeam: Thales – Belfast 

Pupil: Seyi, Year 4 

Description: The Smart Tap, designed to track and display water usage, volume, and cost, aims to address water cost awareness in homes without meters, with future integration potential for other household water-using areas, focusing initially on the kitchen sink design.

Tap of Germs

ProtoTeam: Thales – Cheadle 

Pupil: Madiha, Year 8

Description: The Tap of Germs integrates software, UV light, and handwashing gel to guide users through effective handwashing and ensure cleanliness, aiming to reduce the spread of germs and improve hand hygiene practices, addressing the issue that 97% of people don’t wash their hands properly. 

Sign right

ProtoTeam: Thales – Crawley 

Pupil: Scarlet, Year 6

Description: Sign Right is an innovative sign language translator app that allows users to record a 10-second video of sign language and translates it into text in real-time, enhancing communication for children with hearing loss in educational settings through user-friendly design and practical classroom tools. 

Solar Powered Heated Blanket

ProtoTeam: Thales – Glasgow 

Pupil: Rebecca, Primary 7 

Description: The Solar-Powered Heated Blanket features solar panels that charge a battery during the day, which powers the blanket at night. Stored in a weatherproof rucksack with a 3D-printed frame to hold the panels, it includes smart controls for heat settings and a temperature sensor for safety. It provides a convenient, reusable solution designed to help the homeless stay warm.

Walkie Frame

ProtoTeam: Thales – Templecombe 

Pupil: Erin, Year 7  

Description: The Walkie-Frame is a walking frame designed with detachable side-mounted walking sticks and clip-on storage bags, aimed at improving convenience and usability for elderly individuals living in small spaces, and enhancing daily living.

Seed Planting Drone

ProtoTeam: University of Southampton 

Pupil: Emily, Year 3

Description: The automated seed-planting robot addresses soil degradation and biodiversity loss by regenerating soil quality through effective seed planting, featuring automated soil sensing for optimal seed selection and eco-friendly design for use in low-accessibility areas, aiming to enhance sustainability and reduce environmental impact.

Thank you to everyone who casted their vote, follow the Primary Engineer socials to see the winner announced on November 19th.

The post Primary Engineer MacRobert Medal: Public Vote first appeared on Primary Engineer.

School pupils, university students and engineers travelled to London this week for the highly prestigious Primary Engineer MacRobert Medal Award Ceremony to receive recognition for their work in creating a Prototype based on a school pupils engineering idea.  

The Primary Engineer MacRobert Medal is part of the wider Leaders Award competition which asks the question “If you were an engineer, what would you do?”. School pupils from the ages of 3-19 are asked to identify a problem in the world around them and come up with a creative solution to that problem. These ideas are then selected by Primary Engineer’s university and industry partners to turn into working Prototypes. The ‘ProtoTeams’ who build the prototypes have to do so alongside the pupil who came up with the idea, and it is both ProtoTeam and pupil who are given the award. 

The event, which was hosted at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, is designed to celebrate the people who have turned the ideas of school pupils into reality through the creation of a prototype. School pupils who took part in the Leaders Award competition answered the question “If you were an engineer, what would you do?”, and partners of Primary Engineer select ideas each year and to build into working prototypes.  

Dr Susan Scurlock MBE, Founder and Chief Executive of Primary Engineer, spoke at the award ceremony and said: 

“The young people who entered the competition at the outset may not have known what engineering is, but now they know what engineering does – it helps people, saves the planet and makes the world a better place. The quality of the ideas and designs has completely blown us away this year, with is being an exceptionally tough job for the judges to award the winners from all out shortlisted prototypes, all of which have incredible potential to impact the real world.  

What these inspiring school pupils, university students and engineers have shown us above all else is that “If you were an engineer, what would you do?” is a question that has the potential to change more than we know!” 

The award is supported by The MacRobert Trust and Weir Group, and Jon Stanton – Chief Executive Office at WEIR Group PLC – was part of the judging panel, as well as presenting the gold medals at the award ceremony.  

He said:  

“It’s a fantastic initiative that harnesses the imagination and creativity of school children and showcases what can happen when you engage children in engineering from a young age. Weir is a longstanding industry partner of Primary Engineer, and I was honoured to be part of the judging panel. We’re delighted to celebrate the winners who have demonstrated the very best in engineering and the potential to make an impact in the real world. Congratulations to you all.” 

The competition is running again this year, and is open to every school in the UK, you can learn more at www.leadersaward.com. 

The full list of winners can be found below: 

Bronze Medals

Anti-Waste Fridge 

ProtoTeam: Edge Hill University,
Spencer Asamoah, Samuel Molyneux, Madan Bhandari, Maz Khleel, Prof. Ray Sheriff, Sarah Trafford, Dr Xutao Deng, Dr Thomas John, and Michael Boyle  

Pupil: Leonardo Trivedi 

School: Liverpool College 

How do you solve the problem of food waste? Well Leonardo, from Liverpool College in Liverpool wanted to find a way for families to be reminded they have food to eat before it expires. Using a scanner in the Anti-Waste Fridge, you scan the fresh food you buy and the fridge stores information about expiry dates. 

Edge Hill University selected this idea because it posed a number of interesting technical challenges for their engineering students and loved being able to invite Leonardo back to campus to show him the working prototype. 

Solar Powered Train

ProtoTeam: University of Edinburgh,
Dr Andrew Firth, Iain Gold, and Steven Gourlay

Pupil: Sean Parry

School: Linlithgow Primary School

How can you power trains using renewable energy? Well Sean from Linlithgow Primary School in Linlithgow came up with the idea for the solar powered train, that would help the environment by using solar panels on top of the train to generate clean electricity. 

The University of Edinburgh selected this idea to build in 2021 and have displayed to thousands of young people at the Royal International Air Tattoo in both 2022 and 2023. 

Silver Medals

The Hydro-Paddle 2.0 

ProtoTeam: Glasgow Caledonian University,
Adam Carlyle, Ronan McDowall, Louis Saez, Mollie Reid, Roel Doloiras, Jessica McCreath, Matthew O’Hagan, Matthew Duguid

Pupil: Heather Cox

School: Portmoak Primary School

How can you use the fact it rains a lot in Scotland to your advantage? Well Heather from Portmoak Primary School in Kinross came up with the idea for the Hydro Paddle which can fit in your drain pipe and spin when water passes through it, generating clean energy.  

The Hydro Paddle was originally selected by Glasgow Caledonian University in 2019 and has been improved up to the Hydro-Paddle 2.0 you see today. 

Shimmy, Shimmy Shower 

ProtoTeam: University of Edinburgh,
Steven Gourlay, Iain Gold, Alasdair Christie

Pupil: Erin Cameron

School: Bankton Primary School

What can you do to make it easier for people to adjust the shower head when they can’t reach it? Well Erin from Bankton Primary School in Livingston wanted to fix this problem for a specific reason – her gran couldn’t reach the shower head to adjust it, and Erin wanted to make it easier for her.  

The team at the University of Edinburgh selected this design to build because Iain, Steven and Alasdair in the technical team found it particularly inspiring and carrying potential as a real-world invention. 

Gold Medals

Unicorn Health Bot

ProtoTeam: University of Sunderland,
Abdu Shaalan, Spyros Fakiridis, Dave Knapton

Pupil: Francesca Mobberley

School: Dame Allan’s Junior School

How do you help keep children calm while they are in hospital? Well Francesca, a pupil from Dame Allan’s Junior School in Newcastle, came up with the Unicorn Health bot that is friendly to sick children, has a health scanner in its horn and a long mane to for children to stroke so they don’t get scared. 

The team the University of Sunderland where moved by Francesca’s idea and wanted to involve both their engineering and nursing departments when creating the prototype. 

A Face for a Plant

ProtoTeam: Thales,
Thomas Blake, Pietro Casabianca, Harry Jones,
Angus MacInnes, Mark Gallacher

Pupil: Zavier Sankar

School: St Thomas’ Catholic Primary School

What do you do if your house plants keep dying, but you don’t know why? Well Zavier, a pupil from St Thomas’ Catholic Primary School in Sevenoaks came up with an idea – what if the plant could tell you what it needs? Through an LED screen displaying an emoji to communicate what is wrong with the plant, you can tell from across the room what needs to be done.  

The ProtoTeam at Thales selected this idea, and they are our first Industry Partner to create a prototype. 

Flat Pack Wind Turbine

ProtoTeam: Glasgow Caledonian University,
Jamie Whitehead, Rebekah Edgar, Adam Friend,
Scott McCulloch

Pupil: Douglas Macartney

School: The Royal High School

How do you solve a problem like powering a refugee camp. Well Douglas, a pupil at The Royal High School in Edinburgh was inspired by IKEA furniture to come up with the Flat Pack Wind Turbine that could be dropped into refugee camps and generate power.  

Glasgow Caledonian University turned this idea into reality and continued to develop it, with the turbine currently in Kenya helping power rural communities in East Africa. 

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