About Zero Robotics

Zero Robotics Middle School Summer Program 2022

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Program Overview

Zero Robotics is an inspiring program for middle school students that is truly out of this world! The five-week STEM curriculum introduces students to computer programming, robotics, and space engineering, and provides hands-on experience programming Astrobee Satellites. Zero Robotics is provided through a partnership between the MIT Space Enabled Research Group, the Innovation Learning Center, the Aerospace Corporation, the ISS National Laboratory, the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, (NASA), National Science Foundation and Aurora Flight Science: a Boeing Company. Zero Robotics seeks to inspire our next generation of great minds by allowing them unprecedented access to space at the middle school level. By making the benefits and resources of the International Space Station tangible to students, Zero Robotics hopes to cultivate an appreciation of science, technology, engineering and math through healthy, immersive, collaborative competition.

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Game

Student participants compete to win a technically challenging game by programming their strategies into an Astrobee Satellite. Students’ programs control the satellites' speed, rotation, and direction of travel. The students program their satellites to complete competition objectives like navigating obstacles, while conserving resources such as fuel. The programs are autonomous - that is, the students are not able to directly control the satellites while they are running.

Each year’s game is motivated by a problem of interest to NASA and MIT.

The Zero Robotics Summer Program has students write code for NASA's Astrobee satellite aboard the International Space Station. NASA’s next-generation free-flyer, Astrobee, replaces the previously used hardware used for Zero Robotics, the SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hole Engage Reorient Experimental Satellites).

Students will create, edit, save, and simulate projects online. They will use a graphical editor to write code, then simulate their programs immediately and see the results using a simulation. The programming interface and simulation are entirely web-based, so ZR does not require any software downloads or computer configuration.

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