MIT Zero Robotics

Updated on Oct 20, 2023

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Zero Robotics is an international competition programming robotics Aerospace, which is based on the programming of special robot called SPHERES, or artificial satellites-like spherical (actually 18 faces),VLAD, located inside the International Space Station.

The competition starts online, on the website zerorobotics.org, where people can register to then part of a team (Team), led by team captains (Mentors). The teams that are formed can then take part in a race that is repeated annually.

Bidders can create, edit, share, simulate, and submit your own code, through their web browser. After several stages of various competitions virtual secondary, selecting the finalists to compete in a live championship aboard the ISS. An astronaut will conduct the final competition in a state of weightlessness through a channel of direct communication.

Tournaments

Zero Robotics competition is divided into three types of tournaments.

High School Tournament:. Among students aged between 14 and 18 years. The tournament takes place every fall between September and December. This is a national event open to all teams from the US and Europe.

Middle School Summer Program". It is dedicated to younger students. It is a five-week program in which students learn to program through a simplified graphical interface than normal textual programming environment. The program will take place in places "to be determined" based on where there is a strong geographic presence of the team members.

Open Challenges: They are open to all, from all over the world, including professionals, educators, students, and many others. You can participate individually or as part of a team. These competitions usually involve an intense production of code and complex algorithms, which will help future missions to space flight.

Objectives of tournaments

Participants compete together to win a game technically challenging, motivated by a problem of current interest to DARPA, NASA and MIT. Depending on the challenge, students must program their satellites to complete certain objectives (to avoid obstacles, collect virtual objects, destroy targets, etc.) while preserving the primary resources (fuel, energy charges, etc.) and complete the challenge within certain limits of time and space for writing code. The software of the students must be able to control factors such as the speed of the satellite, the rotation, the direction of travel, and many others, to be able to find the perfect algorithm to achieve the purpose and meet the challenges in the shortest possible time than their opponents.

The difficulty lies in the fact that the programs are "autonomous" in the sense that when they are done they will last for the duration of the challenge and you can not control or modify their execution. It should be noted in addition that the programmable memory of the SPHERE has a limit, which leads to force the use of a programming style clean and without waste of resources.

Physics

Participants in Zero Robotics are driven to learn and / or improve their knowledge related to basic physics, because the ideal situation of the competition is to find the optimal algorithm shift in weightlessness, imposing forces, and / or speed to the satellite. You can still get good results by working exclusively through imposition of the satellite coordinates.

Programming

Participants in the challenge Zero Robotics learn to program in a language-like C / C++, in which you can use different APIs to enforce the main parameters of the movements of the satellite. The development environment for writing the code is online on the official website of the competition, and is called the IDE.

Past Winners High School Tournament (USA)

2014 CoronaSphere ISS Finals

Alliance LakeElevenVADARS

Team Lake, Clear Lake High School, TX, USA

Corà's Eleven Liceo G.B.Brocchi, Italy

VADARS South Charleston High School, WV, USA

2013 CosmoSPHERES ISS Finals

Alliance y0b0tics! Gru Eagle

y0b0tics!, NJ

The Grew Cru, TX

Cosmic Eagles, MA

2012 RetroSPHERES ISS Finals

Alliance Mira Loma

Mira Loma Matadors, CA

y0b0tics!, NJ

Green Wrenches, WA

2011 AsteroSPHERES ISS Finals

Alliance Rocket

River Hill High School, MD

Storming Robots, NJ

Rock ledge High School, FL

Past Winners High School Tournament (EU)

2013 CosmoSPHERES ISS Finals

Alliance C.O.F.F.E.E.

Sunday Programmers, Italy

Nemesis Colegio Retamar, Spain

Hello World American, France

2012 RetroSPHERES ISS Finals

Alliance B.E.E.R.

Kathe in Space, Germany

Sunday Programmers, Italy

Herder-Berlin, Germany

Trivia

The challenge is also interesting for the logic with which hackers can overcome their opponents, exploiting any bugs in their favor if discovered before they are resolved or prohibited. On numerous occasions were discovered bugs within the simulation challenges of satellites: An example is the bug of "brute-force of melting ice", discovered by a boys' team CyberAvo of Turin in 2011, which allowed their satellite to destroy a target expected in the challenge in times significantly smaller than expected (by repeating a number of times a method for melting ice, which according to the official manual of the time it was impossible). Another example is the bug of "unlimited ghost-code through DEBUG (())", as cataloged by the team AvoTeam in 2012, and allowed to run code in the SPHERE through method DEBUG (()) so that was not actually "counted" in the calculation of the total memory occupied by the entire program (because it was found that the method of DEBUG (()) in fact was the only one who was not actually counted in the total amount of resources consumed during the programming of code): everything made so actually can run code inherently more complex opponents and use more resources programmable memory of those granted by the rules.

References

MIT Zero Robotics Wikipedia

(Text) CC BY-SA

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