Zero Robotics

Zero Robotics is a computer programming competition where the robots are SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold Engage and Reorient Experimental Satellites) inside the International Space Station. The competition starts online via a website hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where teams program the SPHERES to solve an annual challenge. After several phases of virtual competition in a simulation environment that mimics the real SPHERES, finalists are selected to compete in a live championship aboard the ISS.

Six Bay Area participants in the California Zero Robotics Summer Program for middle school kids celebrated their newly acquired engineering knowledge at the program's "FinalDay" on Aug. 15 at Moffett Field, and the fact that their teams had lost in the first round of the competition didn't diminish their enthusiasm.

The event took place at NASA Ames, and marked the finale of the second year California has participated in the national Zero Robotics summer program, according to NASA Ames Research Center officials. The program was coordinated by the California Afterschool Network.

Program organizers said that the five-week program taught 50 middle schoolers computer engineering skills. Participants included students from under-served schools, and members of the Boys and Girls Club Ernest Ingold Clubhouse, and the Buchanan YMCA of San Francisco, and the YMCA of Mt. Madonna in Morgan Hill.

Jeff Davis, a California Afterschool Network program director, said that the relatively low attendance for the final competition day resulted primarily from the fact that school had started for many of the participants.

Organizers hoped that the program and competition encouraged the middle schoolers to acquire a greater interest in science, technology, mathematics and engineering as well as a belief that they could become engineers in the future.

Read rest of the article here & find out more information on the program here.

SOURCE(S): The Mountain View Voice; Zero Robotics