History of Zero Robotics
Zero Robotics is a satellite programming tournament that uses satellite-robots called SPHERES (synchronized position satellites and satellite reorientation) within the International Space Station. The tournament starts on-line, on this MIT website (link to MIT - Zero Robotics), where the teams schedules the SPHERES to solve an annual challenge. After several phases of virtual competition in a simulation environment that mimics the real SPHERES, the finalists are selected to compete in a live championship on board the ISS. ¡An astronaut will organize the championship competition in microgravity with a live TV broadcast!
The competition or tournament Zero Robotics was created in 2009 by the Space Systems Laboratory of the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States of America.
Designing new miniature satellites that meet all the security requirements of the International Space Station (ISS) would be costly and time-consuming, so Zero Robotics focuses exclusively on programming a pair of existing SPHERES satellites. Board of the Space Station: the programs that compete for each school will be located on these satellites and will be tested in real time on the ISS.
In 2011, the tournament spread beyond the United States, reaching some experimental sites in Europe, including the Piedmont and Veneto regions in Italy and Berlin and Aachen in Germany. Twenty-five schools from Italy and Germany participated in this pilot phase of the competition in a European tournament. In 2012 the contest was extended to all of Europe.
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