A Queensland school robotics course is drawing a growing number of girls to STEM subjects, and encouraging a new generation of female engineers.
Traditionally a male-dominated area, the number of girls taking up robotics in schools is growing fast.
Merrimac State High School on the Gold Coast offers arguably Australia's top robotics program.
They are the current Gold Coast Mayor's Technology Award winners, and Australian National Robotics and World Robotics Summit junior champions.
The school is sending two teams to this year's world summit in Japan to defend their title.
Robot builder Maya Wood, 15, is part of a team going to the summit Tokyo.
"I think it's all very exciting," she said. "I never thought I'd be doing this."
"It's amazing to see what they can do.
"I never thought I'd like robotics at all, but I love it so much."
While the Merrimac robotics classrooms are still predominantly filled with boys, girls are fast taking up the subject.
Science, technology, engineering, arts and maths (STEAM) coach Daniel Ricardo said girls made up 40 per cent of the class.
"We've made huge ground there," he said.
"The last 13 years I've been teaching senior IT, the girls have been top students 10 out of 13 times."
He said the lack of female representation in STEAM was not due to girls not being good at it, but because of ingrained gender stereotypes and a lack of female role models.
The Merrimac robotics students run a mentoring program, which sees them promote the pursuit at local primary schools.
Mr Ricardo said it was proving popular among female primary students.
"We see more girls engaged than we see boys," he said.
"We find with coding and robotics and computational thinking, any kid that loves a puzzle … that intrinsic motivation is what gets them."
The future of robots
Maya's team is working on a domestic robot, to help with chores.
But she said robots would be doing much more in the future.
"They're going to help out around the house, they're going to talk to us, drive cars … teach primary school kids, really anything," she said.
Mr Ricardo said it would really help with marking and reports.
"I think sometimes kids want us to be replaced pretty quickly," he said with a laugh.
"A lot of teachers will be happy about that, getting their work-life balance back."
The Merrimac State High School students are headed to Tokyo to defend their World Robot Summit title in October.
