This simulation puts the student as the lead programming engineer for a space robotics exploration mission. Each student can have persistent accounts, and progress through a series of “levels” with increasing complexity of mission assignments. The rover is controlled through a simple scripting language, using the basics of Cartesian coordinates. Every landing site is provided with a top down radio scanned map of the surface, as seen from orbit. Points of Interest (POIs) are assigned in missions and require power efficient programming to complete the activity… such as driving the rover to a specific location and taking a series of ground samples. The programming must be carefully planned as obstacles and hazards can cause mission failure, as well as not completing the specified parameters. Each mission completes with a returned to the landing pad, requiring calculations on returning to proper vectors and completing required script commands. Students are also “graded” for each mission, and allowed to return to missions to attempt to increase scores. Each mission script can also be saved, and shared between systems, allowing for teachers or helpers to “debug” scripting issues.

The simulation “Heads Up Display” (HUD) puts the student behind a monitor watching the rover’s progress either directly from (First Person View) or behind the rover (Third Person View). The landscape and various obstacles and hazards are beautifully rendered in 3D, providing a realistic sense of the challenges. The HUD provides the specific attitude and coordinates of the rover in space, a power calculator that shows both the current battery charge and drain as well as the motor system temperature, environmental conditions including temperature, pressure and radiation levels, a GPS system and elevation monitor, as well as a console status with mission times and script status.

 The rover, similar to NASA’s Mars Rover, lands and is designed to move across the landscape, taking various scientific readings. It can directly sample the soil and air, as well as set scientific and communications packages in key locations. The rover is simply a tool to learn more about this alien environment, in the hopes of extending earth’s knowledge of its neighboring planets and star systems, and perhaps one day establish a colony in space. Missions can be designed to search for water or specific minerals as well as search for the telling signs of current or former life.

 Teachers, this simulation allows you to interactively teach a variety of skills, in a practical and interesting environment. Students must learn 2D navigation skills as well as begin to understand 3D (Z) concepts and the impact in a application such as scientific space exploration. Environmental issues, hazards and obstacles impact the performance of the rover, its ability to efficiently complete a mission, the power budget available to the rover and other peripheral issues that add interest. Students receive immediate feedback on their ability to create a solution to the mission problem. The scripting language has been designed to avoid syntax issues, removing problems such as misplaced commas or breakpoints. The script is a highly serial basic command line syntax and highly descriptive. Only simple basic commands are necessary, but can be concatenated to create very complex behavior in the rover. Missions available in the release version are highly customizable and can scale from novice to highly advanced scripting. Advanced Programming classes can opt to work with Hyperkat to develop any appropriate language format – even machine language to control the rover. Students create their own “Player” and can save their mission scripts for study and reuse. The release version will also have an option to allow missions to be shared online (with their scripts) in a closed environment. Hyperkat can create custom missions or provide a mission builder application that will allow you create your own environments and place the various POIs, as well as build out the mission requirements.

 While designed for educational purposes, the Planetary Rover Simulation is also a great hobbyist tool, providing hours of entertainment solving difficult missions. Future releases of the simulator allows the user to advance into more complex and capable rovers and further deepen the ability to search for extraterrestrial resources and life!

 

For more information on the script go to the RoverSS page.

If you need to contact me about this project or alternatives  please email me Howard Dortch