Exciting conclusion of Zero Robotics 2015 Challenge
Alliances CrabNebulaMVZeroVADARS and TheFermiFloatingTeamTachyonsJuggler, both made up of students from Italy and the USA, got to take home the joint championship prize at the Live 2015 ISS Zero Robotics Tournament finals which took place on the International Space Station on Monday.
More than 100 upper secondary school students from across Europe and Russia met at the Euro Space Centre in Belgium, close to ESA’s Redu Station, to participate in the tournament. This is the fourth time that the International Space Station has been turned into a gaming platform for the ultimate robot game.
The teams spent several months applying their maths and physics problem-solving skills and writing code to control the SPHERES onboard the ISS. SPHERES – short for Synchronised Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites – are volleyball-sized satellites which hover around the weightless ISS using 12 jets powered by compressed gas. These autonomous robots have their own power and propulsion but use the students’ code to navigate.
‘SpySPHERES’ was the game theme for the 2015 tournament. On a playing field full of obstacles and challenges, pairs of teams competed against each other to take photographs of the other satellite and beam them back to Earth, whilst avoiding being photographed themselves.
The competition began last year and progressed through multiple rounds of increasing complexity. Previous rounds have been played on an online visualisation platform, which students accessed to test and improve their codes. The final round of the competition began in December, when teams formed International Alliances of three teams based on the scores obtained in previous rounds.
On Monday the Live 2015 finals between the final 14 International Alliances took place onboard the ISS . Twenty of the teams within the Alliances were from ESA Member States including Italy, Belgium, Romania, Greece, and Germany. A virtual competition for individual teams not in the Alliances was also held in parallel, hosted on the online visualisation platform. The European teams connected with the other teams participating in parallel finals events in the USA (hosted by Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston) and Australia via video conference. During the event, the Alliances watched nervously as the SPHERES battled it out using their codes.
Tough competition
Fermi Floating Team (Italy), Tachyons (USA), and Juggler (Italy). ESA’s Education Office congratulates all of the teams for their hard work.
In the Virtual finals, first place went to ZirconiuM_Paly_Eagles formed by teams ZiRconiuM (Italy), Paly Robotics (USA) and Space Eagles (USA). Space::Yabadabad0rs!, formed by teams Code::Space (Romania), Team y0b0tics! (USA) and Mira Loma Metadors (USA) took second place.
In addition to the finals, students attending the event also had the chance to participate in tours of the Euro Space Centre, the ESA Redu Station, and the Bouillon castle.
