STEM
April 6, 2023
The tour group stops for a picture while touring the Yamanashi Prefectural Maglev Exhibition Center, where an experimental maglev train passes every ten minutes at up to 500 kph.
While in Japan, the group, led by local tour guide Shigeru “Waka” Wakayama, primarily visited locations that engaged with the “Robotics, Engineering, and the Future of Cities” theme of the tour. Among these locations were the Rinkai Disaster Prevention Park, the Toshiba Science Museum, the Tokyo Skytree, Akihabara Electric Town, and the group was even able to see a test run of the Maglev train, one of the fastest in the world. Then on a visit to Tsukuba, Japan, students were able to test the arm portion of a Hybrid Assistive Limb (HAL) suit at Cyberdyne Studio.
Once in Seoul, South Korea, students were led by tour guides and were able to visit the Hyundai Motorstudio in Goyang where they learned about the high tech car manufacturing process and were even able to sit in a fully autonomous smart vehicle of the future.
“It was a great experience to see what our future can look like and know that these prototypes are already being developed and not so far off. Interacting with these systems was an unreal experience,” said senior John Zamora.