ESA Robotics Challenge for Secondary Schools

Mary Mullaghy September 29, 2012

Let the space games begin! Mini satellites floating in the International Space Station are on their marks. Competition rules for the Zero Robotics space game will be unveiled on Saturday with a webcast live from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, USA.

The Zero Robotics high school tournament challenges students to write algorithms that control Spheres − short for Synchronised Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites – on the International Space Station. The volleyball-sized satellites have their own power, propulsion and navigation systems.

Students can follow the event this Saturday, 8 September at 17:00 GMT (19:00 CEST) via web streaming, and tweet questions to the organisers. Contenders will receive crucial information about the game, its rules and even tips to cross the finish line ahead of the opposition.

The algorithms have to make the droids capture a spinning space object or perform an autonomous rendezvous and docking.

For more details see: http://www.esa.int/esaHS/SEM6SV7YJ6H_index_0.html

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Zero Robotics Tournament 2015

The fourth annual Zero Robotics Tournament for secondary school students has offically started. This challenge gives the chance to students to improve their programming and problem solving skills by using the SPHERES, the famous volley-ball sized satellites onboard of the ISS.

The competition is organized by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) together with NASA and ESA, with participants coming from the ESA’s member states, the USA and Russia. The selection of the competition finalists is based on the results of online simulations and on games between the different teams that will take place in Autumn 2015.

In January 2016 the finalists will then participate in one big event. The European students will gather in Redu (Belgium), while the American students will meet each other in Boston. During this final event the students will be connected live to the ISS. They will see their codes running for real inside the station, as the astronauts use the students’ code to manoeuvre the real SPHERES. This year Tim Peake should take part to the event from orbit.

Since its first edition, each year more than 50 European teams have participated in the Zero Robotics challenge. With your help we would like to increase this number and make this nice challenge more known and spread. This is why we kindly ask you to promote the Zero Robotics competition through your outreach channels and  networks.

You will find the announcement for Europe on the ESA Education website (and social networks) at: http://www.esa.int/Education/Zero_Robotics_Secondary_School_Tournament_2015_to_launch

The details about the challenge, the registration form and the related classroom resources are accessible on the MIT website at http://zerorobotics.mit.edu/. If you have questions or if you need more details don’t hesitate to contact Antoine (antoine.hubert@esa.int or e-roboticslab@esa.int), always keeping Clara in copy. We will be happy to help you make the participation of your national teams a success.

Mary Mullaghy September 28, 2015

Zero Robotics Competition 2013

The Zero Robotics High School Tournament 2013Massachusetts Institute of Technology Space Systems Laboratory, 70 Vassar St., Cambridge, MA 02139 (“MIT”) and TopCoder, Inc., 95 Glastonbury Blvd., Glastonbury, CT 06033 ("TopCoder"). 
The Tournament is sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, NASA, and the European Space Agency (ESA) ("Sponsors").  The ESA Tournament is open to teams of ESA member states composed of high-school equivalent students who meet the application criteria and submit a valid application.
More information can be found at the following link

http://www.zerorobotics.org/web/zero-robotics/tournament-details?tournamentId=13

Mary Mullaghy June 2, 2014

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