LHS group competing for control of robots on the International Space Station
Simulated keep-away competition will be televised on NASA TV
A comet is about to hit Earth, and it's up to nine computer programming students from Lubbock High School and their teammates to deflect it and save the day.
That scenario will be simulated at the International Space Station this Friday as the LHS Zero Robotics teams heads to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the last round of a competition featuring SPHERE robots in space.
The simulation - for which the students already wrote the codes - will be streaming live on NASA TV.
"It's like a sport," said Peter Lee, a 16-year-old junior who will make the trip. The object of the game will be to keep the comet as far away from their home base and as close to their opponent's as possible.
The LHS group - juniors Lee, Ross Raedeke, Justin Rodriguez, Kelly Jiang, Carl Smith, Michael Cheon, Carter Airhart, James Parsons and Perry DuBose - has teamed up with high schools in New Jersey and Massachusetts to write the computer programming codes that could help them win the competition. The "Gru Crew" - as they've been dubbed - will face off with nine other alliances. Their first opponent, Hole Wrenches Lightning, is currently ranked No. 1.
LHS is one of two Texas schools in the final round of the competition.
Sam Black, the Zero Robotics sponsor, said this competition is not about building a robot. It's about taking control of a robot which already exists.
Astronauts and MIT personnel have been experimenting with SPHERE robots on the International Space Station since 2003, he said.
SPHERE is short for Synchronized Position Hold Engage and Reorient Experimental Satellites.
The Zero Robotics competitions began in 2009, and LHS has entered the last three times. Black said the eventual goal is to make a much larger replica of the SPHERE robots - currently the size of volleyballs - to be used in space. The competitions began as a way to see if better ideas for the SPHEREs could come out of the next generation, Black said. Judges could be looking for contributions such as better solutions to shortest path algorithms.
The trip to MIT will cost each student about $5,200, Black said. And though they won't get any award money in return, regardless of their final rank in the competition, the students will get the opportunity to tour the prestigious college campus and meet with astronauts - not to mention a huge resume boost.
The students have already learned teamwork and communication skills through the process, Black said, which included once-a-week video chats with the East Coast schools in Gru Crew.
They also were able to see real-life application of lessons learned in their high school computer programming class.
"It's not just all academic anymore," Black said. "Physics and calculus is more than numbers on a piece of paper."
Lee admitted the team has somewhat of a "dirty" strategy going into the competition, but it's one they hope will get them to the top. They believe in keeping it organized and simple.
"We're not trying to increase our score. We're trying to make sure they don't score," he said.
Recorded simulations for previous phases of the competition show the Gru Crew's robot guiding their opponent's out of bounds, resulting in disqualification for the other team.
The teams get points for collecting asteroids, which Lee said increases their robot's mass, and efficiency.
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