An interview with RealTechBot

At the Denham tournament, the team were able to meet a range of Bosch associates, including Stephanie Alexander, Hien Hoang, and Amy Morris who are all engineers. In light of International Women in Engineering Day on23rd June, Stephanie, Hien and Amy sat down and talked to the ‘RealTechBot’ team about their LEGO successes, their future plans, and what they have learnt along the way.

Amy, Bosch: What has been the most important thing you’ve learned this year?
Tasnim, RealTechBot: To learn how to work in a team. At school you don’t really get to do that a lot but there we had to rely completely on our teammates and learn how to work together and co-ordinate all the skills that you need to be able to lead a team.

Hien, Bosch: And now that you’ve done this twice, would you encourage your friends to take part?
Zara, RealTechBot: Definitely. They were really proud that we got to the internationals. And now because my sister came with us, she wants to join the team.

Stephanie, Bosch: What was your favourite part of going to the international tournament?
Fatema, RealTechBot: For me, it would be getting to know so many different people from so many different countries and making new friends and having fun, but it was also about the learning part.

Amy, Bosch: How would you use this experience in your future life?
Zara, RealTechBot: I think throughout the competition, you had to be really confident. I can use this during school when I have presentations to do.

Tasnim, RealTechBot: Building on that, presentation skills were really important. Now in school we are starting to do lots of presentations and I know in jobs and later on in life we’re going to need to do presentations to co-workers. That was a really big thing for me.

Hien, Bosch: I think that was one of your strengths when you presented to us. You seemed so confident and you didn’t read off your scripts. You memorised everything and your personalities come through in your presentation, which I remember. You have nailed your presentation skills at quite a young age! Do you have any new challenges you want to undertake as a team or individually?
Tasnim, RealTechBot: I’m learning the Python coding language so I hope in future years I’ll be able to programme a robot with Python instead of Scratch, which will hopefully help it to be even more advanced!

Amy, Bosch: Talking about next year’s competition, if you could pick a new theme, what would you find exciting to learn about?
Tasnim, RealTechBot: It would be cool if there was a theme about the whole world. That way we could research it for our Innovation Project and know things from all around the world and not just England.

Fatema, RealTechBot: I would really enjoy learning about lots of ideas from different cultures and countries too. We could get to know about different types of people.

Zara, RealTechBot: I would like to learn about the agriculture in different countries.

Stephanie, Bosch: All three of us are engineers ourselves – do you have any questions for us?

Tasnim, RealTechBot: What do you need to do at school to become an engineer?
Stephanie, Bosch: I took a very non-traditional route. I didn’t know that I wanted to be an engineer until after I had picked my A-levels, so my A-levels and GCSEs had nothing to do with engineering. I think most places would like you to look at sciences and maths but I would also recommend that you should take what you enjoy!

Hien, Bosch: It’s important to remember that university isn’t the only route to engineering. You can do apprenticeships where you get hands-on experience, especially for you guys who like to build robots! Some of our colleagues have taken that route and gained their qualifications whilst working.

Amy, Bosch: I actually did an engineering GCSE. My school had an engineering college status so there are some specialist schools out there. I also did Design and Technology and I still like the creative side and understanding how a product feels and when that product is working, how it makes the user feel. There’s so many different degrees out there – you can touch on lots of different disciplines or go directly to a specific type of engineering. I went general and I still change my mind all the time. Even since I’ve been working here at Bosch, I’ve moved from product design engineering to quality and reliability engineering. There’s a lot of transferrable skills. Always stay inquisitive – always ask how does that work or why does that work.

Fatema, RealTechBot: What’s the best branch of engineering if you like designing? I’m into product designing myself.
Amy, Bosch: It all sits under product development engineer. If we speak in terms of Bosch, that could be a very small component on a car or a full lawnmower. In both situations, you need design but on different levels.

Hien, RealTechBot: Bosch is quite unique in that it touches into lots of different industries. You don’t need to be restricted and you can move around, try lots of things, and see what you like designing!

Stephanie, Bosch: It’s good to keep it as open as possible. Amy and Hien are in Home and Garden and I work in the Automotive sector so there’s a lot of varied engineering work that you may have never realised.

Zara, RealTechBot: What’s the best part about being an engineer?
Amy, Bosch: I really like problem solving and I find it quite incredible that if we have the small problem of 'we want to have an easy to move pressure washer’, we get to consider the finer detail of what that means. You try and identify what that problem is and work all the way round to thinking about wheels and handles and centres of mass. When you see it come of the production line, or see it in the store, that’s really exciting to see how the problem was solved.

Hien, Bosch: I get really excited when I see the end product or the prototype. You work on a design on your computer for so long and only see it in a virtual world. When you get that first physical prototype that you can take out of the box, put it together and physically touch it, that’s really satisfying. The other day I saw someone using a product I worked on in their garden and I got really excited!

Stephanie, Bosch: I think I would say the same. A lot of the engines that I’ve worked on are actually on the road today and some of them are in London buses. So as I live just outside of London, I see my work quite often and I think that’s cool. It’s also about knowing you’re helping other people. There are always problems to solve that we have as society in general, and all of us in the engineering world are just trying to do our bit and make things easier, better, or more environmentally friendly.

At the end of the interview, we asked the group what they thought the importance of International Women in Engineering Day is.
Stephanie, Bosch: I think for me, the fact that we as young ladies and older ladies, make up 50% of the population, but at the time when I joined the engineering world we were only 6% of the engineers. A lot of the engineering or design problems that we’ve had over the years were the result of women not being thought about or taken into account when problem solving. The fact that we’re actively trying to improve that and make sure that everybody is included when we’re solving problems is a big deal. It’s also nice to see that in the years since I’ve joined the workforce, the number of women has grown and we’re always looking for more!

Amy, Bosch: Just to have as many perspectives on solutions is always a benefit, not even just gender diversity, but looking at age, race, disability etc. is so important. There are different problems for different people so there’s always going to be different solutions and different perspectives.

Hien, Bosch: We have a shortage of engineers in the UK in general, nobody should feel like they can’t go into this field. I didn’t know any engineers when I was younger, so it wasn’t a career that was really promoted to me. Reaching out to students like yourselves is important, whether you’re male or female it doesn’t matter because you can go into engineering if you want to. You have seen and met a range of people who do that job and know those careers are out there for you.

Zara, RealTechBot: I think it’s important to celebrate Women in Engineering Day because before people wouldn’t think that women were capable of being an engineer but now you see so many young women using lots of engineering skills.

Tamsin, RealTechBot: I think it’s important to recognise that women can be as good as men in anything. Just because you’re a boy, it doesn’t mean you’re better and just because you’re a girl it doesn’t mean you’re less capable. Celebrating this day is important to show that women are accomplishing things in the world.

Fatema, RealTechBot: I would say it’s about perspectives and different types of people. Like they say, two brains are better than one. It’s the same thing with men and women. Men might look at things in a certain way but if you have both men and women looking at it, you might come up with a solution more easily. It would also be a much better solution because you’re working in an inclusive way and looking at everybody’s ideas.

You can read more about International Women in Engineering Day on their website and read more about Bosch’s partnership with LEGO League on our UK website.