AI, cat flaps and Taylor Swift: Young Scientist Expo shows future is in good hands
Tánaiste Micheál Martin at the BT Young Scientist Exhibition with students Ella White and Amy McCullough and their project 'Oh Deer', which examines the impact of deer overpopulation. Picture: Leah Farrell / RollingNews.ie
What do Taylor Swift, the height of a golf club, artificial intelligence and gumshields have in common?
All featured in projects at Thursday's BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition in the RDS.
A total of 1,062 students from all across the island of Ireland gathered in the capital, with 550 projects across 225 schools.
The events of the previous 12 to 18 months seemed to inspire many of said projects.
One project from Hollie Ronanyne and Szonja Mora of St Mary's Secondary School in Macroom focused on dynamic ticket pricing, particularly on Ticketmaster.
It found, among other things, that while it was believed accommodation prices would drive people away from buying tickets for a concert, from 710 respondents to their survey, it was not a major issue.
Part of their survey focused on Taylor Swift — who would also appear in Katie King of Pobalscoil na TrĂonĂłide's project.
She opted to investigate what she called the "phenomenon" surrounding the American pop icon in the wake of her global Eras tour.
She put forward the intense fan behaviour shown by her fans — more commonly known as Swifties — was due to psychological dynamics.
A number of projects also looked at the introduction of the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) and the attitudes from locals in their area or school towards the scheme.
Ellie Sheedy and Ruairi Ă“ DaltĂşin from Kinsale Community School were one such project.
They opted to find find out whether the DRS had changed the behaviour and attitude of the Irish people towards recycling.
Among their findings were that 16% of people were annoyed with the "unreliable" reverse vending machines. and that the education of children towards recycling and the scheme could change some of the negative responses.
"You could do something like say to a kid, you go down there with that bag of bottles or cans and then you get to keep the money. That sort of thing could help massively."
Other students looked towards family matters for inspiration.
Jaidon Ward Barrett, Tomasz Bober, and Rian Curtin of CBS The Green in Tralee had built a prototype device to assist the more than 600,000 people who suffer with mobility issues in Ireland.
It all came off the back of bodily issues with Mr Ward Barrett's grandfather.
"He's had three hip replacements and he's a very proud man. I thought 'is there anything to help this?' and it spiralled then towards spinal injuries and sports rehab and other things." he explained.
"If you had something that could prolong your partial mobility or add independence for another couple of years."
The trio said their prototype could hopefully become a cost effective option — saying there are robot 'butlers' on the market at the moment, but their device would be there to "actually help people".
"We're not interested in becoming millionaires."
Unsurprisingly, AI played a major part in a large number of projects.
Two students from Davis College in Mallow had had enough of dogs and cats managing to get their way in to the school via automatic doors and disrupting classes as a result.
To fix the issue, they had put together an AI-trained camera and after "vigorous testing" had managed to successfully identify two cats.
Both Logan Thomas Walsh and Adam McCarthy said with further research, the technology could be expanded to farm buildings or narrowed to something like cat flaps to prevent homeowners having strays arrive in.
Bee pollination was front and centre of a project put forward by Sr Aloysius School in Cork city and their 'Ro-Bee' — an autonomous robotic agent to assist with pollinating plants when bees were not there to do so.
The future of farming is also in fairly safe hands based on some of the projects under the Biological and Ecological sciences category.
Students from St Brendan's Community School in Offaly focused on 'Chicken Talk' — an experiment they hoped could lead to the replacement of layered pellets that are fed to chickens, which are harmful to the environment.
The overall winner of the BT Young Scientist & Technologist (s) of the Year, announced on Friday, will be awarded €7,500.
Furthermore, they — along with one senior project from each of the four remaining categories — will travel to Japan later this year to present their project at Expo 2025.
The Expo, held once every five years, explores the future of industry, technology and progress.
The overall winner of this year's Young Scientist 2025 will also represent Ireland at the European Union Contest for Young Scientists in Riga, Latvia this September.
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