Central Engineering & Mechanisms
EADS Astrium

Martin G

0.00.00 My name is Martin G. I work at Astrium in the central engineering and mechanisms. My day to day job involves making robots, it’s 50% of my time. The other 50% is writing documents and technical notes for mechanisms and I really enjoy it. When I was quite young, in Year 7, I entered a new engineer’s competition.

0.00.30 It was something that I got into thanks to a teacher who took me for CDT, craft design technology, Mr King, and it was for an invention, whatever you wanted to invent. I wanted to make a hovering car, which is quite ambitious at Year 7. But nevertheless he spurred me on and helped me do it really and we had this four sort of a propeller balsawood craft sort of levitating for a bit and then falling over.

0.01.00 But that for me showed me that perhaps I could, could do my ideas and yeah, could do the ambitious stuff and I’ve not really looked back since. I went to Staffordshire University. I chose to do design technology for robotics and I met a chap called Sam Wayne who was my lecturer for most of the year for the robotics side. In my first year we played with Lego essentially

0.01.30 but we programmed Lego to do a task and it progressed onto further sort of projects such as a robot arm, programming a robot arm. And it led onto finally a project which we were allowed to choose, manufacture ourselves. And by November I had manufactured this, this walking robot and had had it walking around, which is great timing because at that point I was starting to think about my future career and what I might want to do after university.

0.02.00 A chap called Chris Wayman, he, he said, I think he saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself, to be quite ambitious and I don’t think I would have gone to the Careers Fair and spoken to companies like Astrium if it wasn’t for him. It wasn’t long before there was a rumour going around that there was a chap with a robot and companies were trying to talk to me at this fair.

0.02.30 I noticed the Astrium stand cos there was a, it was quite a small model but it was a model of a Mars rover and at this point I didn’t quite know where, where exactly my robots would fit into industry and where my sort of creative spark would be kept entertained if you like. I saw this rover and I thought, god, I wonder if I can make one of those and I remember what Chris said, aim high. So I went over to the stand, I talked to them, they were very friendly.

0.03.00 I showed them the robot walking around and they said, yeah, apply online and we’d like to see you in their recruitment days. And, and that’s where I met Andrew Gibson who I think saw something in me and obviously saw my passion for robots and, and took me on, so I’m grateful to him. My mum and dad met in Dubai, which is where I was born. My dad works on oil rigs as an engineer and my mum is a nurse.

0.03.30 My dad didn’t go to university. He’s got to the position he is now just by experience and, and putting his best into every job. My mum, however, she, she went to university. She’s quite linguistic and yeah, I suppose there were expectations for me to go to university but she always said it was up to me and she always support whatever I did. So I thank her for that really.

0.03.56