SPACED IN: The group listens to astronaut Don Pettit from NASA, a sponsor of the competition.

ACSL team of six earns fourth in Zero Robotics competition.

Last fall, sophomore Jerry Ma received an offer he couldn’t refuse. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) would be holding its annual Zero Robotics competition and invited Ma to participate.

The ACSL club member rounded up some of his fellow clubbers, recruited Mr. Watson as their sponsor, and prepared to enter the competition. The team of six, including sophomores Jerry Ma, John MacDougal, Albert Hwang, Jerry Sha, Anand Hastak and Adam Anderson, called themselves DevilTech. “Since we all like doing things with the computer, we thought it would be a good experience to do some real-world programming,” Hwang said of the competition.

Because the competition only took place on January 23 of the new year, the team had several months to prepare for the challenge. They did so by writing computer programs for satellites that would be used in the competition. The programs were essentially strategies for each phase, and would determine the winner of the phases.

According to the competition’s web page (zerorobotics.org), the challenge included three phases each lasting just sixty seconds. The competition was simulated, and the objective was to mine an alternative energy source called Helium-3 from asteroids using satellites called SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold Engage Reorient Experimental Satellites).

Each of the satellites had a finite amount of virtual energy to use while they collected the tools they would need to mine the Helium-3. The players were offered three different tools: a laser, which allowed players to access richer deposits of the alternative energy source and to attack opponents, a repulsor upgrade, which improved a tool given to each player that could repel another player (the players were also given “tractors,” which served to attract other players), and a shield protecting the satellite from attraction and repulsion.

In the first phase, the competitors had to bide their time in order to choose tools that would aid their strategy in the future phases–tools that were not collected in this phase could not be picked up later.

In phase two, two asteroids, called Opulens and Indigens, appeared in the simulation. Opulens represented icy asteroids; before mining, they must first have their icy shell melted. However, these harder to mine asteroids yielded more Helium-3 than Indigens, and thus were worth more points. To mine the Helium-3, players could either spin on the asteroids (essentially drilling them), or revolve around them, collecting the Helium-3 from the surface. Competitors were also given the strategic option of collaborating with their opponent, an action that would help each team mine faster and as a result, gain more points.

At the start of the final phase, a star illuminated the Opulens, melting the encompassing layer of ice. Players were to continue to mine during the first fifty seconds of this phase. In the last ten seconds, the players raced their satellites to the mining station, earning extra points if they made it there first. During each of the three stages, players had to keep in mind their satellite’s fuel level, the amount of time left in the round, and the actions of their opponents.

The teams played four round robins and one final round, with DevilTech taking fourth place in the world and second in the nation in the semi-finals. Some of the winning programs of the competition are being used on the International Space Station. Ma plans on participating again next year, saying, “I’m fairly happy with our fourth place finish–of course, next year we’ll try for the gold.”