A BASINGSTOKE schoolboy has taken a popular item of 2020, and used it as inspiration for an innovative engineering project.

Samuel Sanderson has developed an intelligent hand sanitiser robot out of Lego, that dispenses hand sanitiser without the need to touch the bottle and gives you just the right amount, reducing waste. It even says “Thank you” at the end.

Samuel said he was inspired by a similar project he’d heard about being done at another school.

“I thought it was really cool and so I did some research about it and then created this,” he said.

The 14-year-old, who is in Year 10 at Sherfield School in Basingstoke, programmed the robot through a Lego Mindstorms intelligent brick.

He added: “I’ve done it in my own time, break times, lunch times, afterschool and at home at the weekends as well.”

The robot works using cameras at the back, so that when you put your hand under the ultrasonic sensors the rotary motor spins to create the movement required to dispense the sanitiser.

Samuel, who has also worked on the robot as part of Sherfield School’s Robotics Club, has programmed the sensors to sense your hand from 7 centimetres away, to avoid people having to touch the robot.

The robot now sits proudly in the entrance hall at his school for students and staff to use.

Ben Marshall, head of Design & Technology at Sherfield School, said: “At Sherfield School and especially within the Design & Technology department we champion innovative problem solving projects like this.

“Samuel has worked extremely hard to develop the product through research and hours of testing, in order to make it a high quality reliable product.”