Agora Sant Cugat International School
Three of our Primary 6 students, Marcos, Andreu and Stepan, participated in the IX Volvo Initiative Programme (www.iniciativavolvo.es) with the aim of collaborating in the design of a vehicle that allows safe and accident-free driving to protect people and facilitate universal accessibility and environmental sustainability. The students decided to establish three lines of work:
- Elements and/or sensors to protect the vehicle’s occupants.
- Elements and/or sensors to protect the vehicle’s occupants from external factors.
- Elements and/or sensors for the vehicle’s internal incident service.
Chosen from more than 540 proposals by the Senior Management Team of Volvo Cars Spain, our team was awarded the Best Online Challenge.
The students were aware from the very beginning that Volvo was the first car company in the world to provide and standardise the three-point seat belt in 1962. In the words of one Volvo representative, “We hoped that a group of children would rethink and come up with an idea that Volvo offered selflessly to the world six decades ago”. The team proposed SMART seat belts with sensors to detect the vital signs of the vehicle’s occupants to prevent heart attacks, strokes, glycaemic coma and other life-threatening complications. Sensors would be installed in the vehicle’s seatbelts at chest level and would have a face code with the following meaning:
- Straight Face: Tips offered to improve the occupant’s health/condition
- Sad Face: Occupant detected to be in critical condition and advised to call the nearest hospital and car and redirected to a safe place.
Our students worked hard together through interaction and comparison and taking into account each other’s ideas. This exchange of concepts and ideas using STEAM skills and knowledge involved looking at different visions of the same problem and coming up with the best result for the challenge. Agora Sant Cugat International School was awarded 12 LEGO SPIKE Prime Robots and recognition for the exceptional work of our students and teachers to promote STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts & Mathematics) in our School.
