I know, I’m a bit late with the logbooks, but bear with me, I still want to bring you back to last week one more time, because last Friday we had a very special event on the Space Station: Butch, Elena and I had the pleasure and honor to host in the Japanese Laboratory the finals of the 2014 Zero Robotics competition!
To participate in Zero Robotics, high school students need to write code that will control a SPHERES satellite – on Earth, of course, only in simulations, but for the teams that made it to the finals, their code actually controls one of the real SPHERES units we have on the Space Station.
SPHERES determine their position in space thanks to five beacons that we deploy in the JEM, thus defining the volume in which the satellites can operate. Small thrusters allow the SPHERES to move around and rotate as needed. Working gas for the thrusters is CO2, coming from small tanks that we can quickly changes out when empty.
At the beginning of every run we set two satellites in a predetermined initial position and orientation and then let go, letting the code of the two competing teams take control. While watching mostly the SPHERES moving around the cabin, we could also keep an eye on the computer display showing the virtual environment in which the satellites were moving, which included an asteroid in the middle of the volume: the tasks for the satellites was to take pictures of this asteroid. But that was not enough: to actually gain points, they needed to point their antennas to Earth and transmit the pictures, all the while dodging solar flare by taking refuge in a safe zone behind the satellite, or else risk having their stored pictures corrupted or even the satellite (virtually) damaged if hit by a flare.
Don’t think that writing good code was the only skill required here: Zero Robotics is very much a strategy game as well and it was fun to watch the different styles, some more cautious, some more aggressive.
Fuel management was a big concern as well: for each run a satellite had an allocated amount of CO2, once that had been consumed they would not be able to fire the thrusters any more. Unless, that is, the satellites would start moving outside the allowed volume, in which case the code from MIT would take over and fire the thrusters to bring them back.
MIT runs Spheres and the ZeroRobotics competitions and most of the US finalists were gathered there watching the finals live, while most of the European finalists were at the ESA facility ESTEC in the Netherlands, including a team who came all the way from Russia!
And several more Russian finalists were gathered in Moscow.
Actually, after the initial stages of the competition last year, teams had to join forces in alliances of three: I believe all of the alliances included teams from the US and from Europe, which I thought was great.
For the record, the Zero Robotics 2014 champions are the LakeElevenVADARS, the alliance of Team Lake (US), Cora’s Eleven (Italy) and VADARS (US). Heartfelt congratulations!
And to all who participated, we’re very proud of you up here: for your enthusiasm and dedication in participating in a game that tested your skills, your creative thinking and your ability to work in a team even across continents. You guys rock. And for 2015… GO Zero Robotics!
Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42
avamposto42.esa.int
(Trad IT) Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS qui:
https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook
(Trad FR) Traduction en français par +Anne Cpamoa ici:
https://spacetux.org/cpamoa/category/traductions/logbook-samantha
(Trad ES) Tradducción en español por +Carlos Lallana Borobio aqui:
https://laesteladegagarin.blogspot.com.es/search/label/SamLogBook
22/01/2015