SPHERES

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What is SPHERES?

• A Facility of the ISS National Laboratory with three nano-satellites designed by MIT to research estimation, control, and autonomy algorithms

• By working aboardISS under crewsupervision, it providesa risk-tolerantenvironment

• The satellites can bereused

– Replenishableconsumables

– Multiple test sessionsassigned per year

• If anything goes wrong,reset and try again!

If you can’t bring the space environment to the laboratory,

take the laboratory to space!

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What is Zero Robotics

• A competition designed to allow Middle- and High-school students unprecedented access to the International Space Station through SPHERES

• Teams of students work to program the SPHERES satellite to win an MIT-designed game

• The teams go through multiple elimination rounds; the top teams see their code tested aboard the ISS

If SPHERES is so “risk tolerant”, why can’t grade-school students use it? … they can!

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What is Zero Robotics…from space!

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High School Tournament

• Fall Semester Tournament– A complementary “software”

competition to FIRST Robotics– Mostly an “afterschool club”

• Mentors are teachers and local engineer volunteers

• Assumed that Mentors can teach programming

• Full programming experience– Both graphical and text programming

available– ZR provides basic online tutorials

• ZR Team supports online only– MIT undergraduates support online

(e-mail, forums)– Forums allow teams to support each

other

Semester-long open national program with online support

2D Simulation

2D Ground Demo

3D Sim. Elimination

3D Semi-Finals

ISS Finals!

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec-Jan

Registration

Alliances

Virtual

Finals

Apr-Sep

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2011 ISS Finals

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ZR Budget

Position Description Time / Qty CostPI & Faculty Lead the research Program 30% + 3mo @ 30% 80,000.00$ Manager Lead the events 100% 104,000.00$ HS Manager Run the High School Tournament 50% 52,000.00$ MS Manager Run the Middle School Summer Program 50% 52,000.00$ Curriculum Manager Develop new educational materials 50% 52,000.00$ Graduate Students Conduct academic/research aspects 3 @ 100% 214,800.00$ UROPs Help support and expand the program 10 57,600.00$ Sub-Total Staff 612,400.00$ PartnershipsAfterschool PartnershipHelp outreach and curriculum development 5 120,000.00$ Top Coder Website development and operations 1 112,000.00$ Aurora Flight SciencesGraphical IDE 1 80,000.00$ External Evaluator Collect data on efficacy of ZR 1 40,000.00$ Sub-Total Partnerships 352,000.00$ ExpensesISS Finals Live event from ISS for HS & MS 2 56,000.00$ Media Productions Production of videos for publicity & outreach 1 32,000.00$ SPHERES Facilities Maintenance and use of SPHERES 1 48,000.00$ Travel For training 3 16,000.00$ Sub-Total Expenses 152,000.00$

TOTAL 1,116,400.00$

SPHERES

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Backup Slides

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Middle-School Overview

• 5-week summer program– Usually part of an afterschool / community organization program

– In past geared towards under-represented & low-income students

– Designed to work as a stand-alone program or part of a larger summer camp

– Official “summer school teachers” are not required to be in the engineering/match/science areas

• Basic programming skills– Goal is to teach strategy (algorithm) techniques

– Limited programming - developed “visual” interface• Attempted C programming with limited success in 2011

• Current implementation assigns one “SPHERES Expert” mentor to each team– An MIT undergraduate learns to use SPHERES and program the game in the early summer

– Goes to help the official teacher in “daily attendance” during the 5 weeks of the program

– Mentors the students on programming, like a “coach”

• Working on a complete curriculum (printed & online materials) to not need a mentor• Schedule

– Spring: game planning/programming

– June: Mentor training

– July/Aug: 5 week Program

– August: ISS Finals

5 Week Summer Program withstrict selection and mentor

support

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ZR Growth

• European Pilot

–21 teams

–Two elimination rounds

• 2010–24 schools

– >200 students

–Two elimination rounds

•2011– 122 teams– >1000 students–Two elimination

rounds

• 2009–2 schools

–13 students

–No elimination rounds

From 2 to over 140 schools in 3 years!

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The parts of Zero Robotics

• All Zero Robotics Competitions have: Several elimination rounds

Finalists’ code is tested aboard the ISS

• High School (grades 9-12) Tournament National open competition

Runs through the Fall (Sep to Dec)

Middle School (6-8) Summer Program

Five week summer program

Programming and physics/math curriculum

Currently requires substantial help to summer-school teachers

Mentors assigned to each participating school

Centered regionally around locations which can provide the necessary support.

• 2012 “Special” Algorithm Challenge:Autonomous Space Capture

– General public access (age 13+; any location)

– Game designed so that participants help create an algorithm for SPHERES (e.g. docking)

– Four week program with weekly milestones

– Objective:

• Dock with a space object that may be tumbling

– Starts March 28!

Two programs: High-school and Middle School

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Contact Information• MIT Investigators

– Prof. David W. Miller, PI– Alvar Saenz Otero, Lead Scientist

• MIT Science Team– Jacob Katz (PhD)– Sreeja Nag (MS)– Sonny Thai (MS)– Swati Mohan (PhD, alum)

• MAP– Katie Magrane, Director

• AFS– Javier de Luis– Jim Francis– Jaime Ramirez– John Merk

• Top Coder– Ira Heffan– Mike Lydon– Ambi del Villar

• NASA ARC– Bruce Yost, Program Manager– Andres Martinez, Project Manager– Steve Ormsby, Operations Lead

• Acknowledgements– NASA HQ & Education Office– Dr. Lorna Finman– Astronaut Gregory Chamitoff

spheres@mit.edu

http://ssl.mit.edu/spheres

zerorobotics@mit.edu

http://zerorobotics.mit.edu