On January 11th, West Lafayette sent representatives the MIT campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts to compete in the Zero Robotics competition.

“Zero Robotics is a programming competition created by MIT and NASA where you program these robots called SPHERES that are essentially mini satellite,” said competitor Albert Hwang ’14.  Each year,  teams from all over the country to watch their programs work against each other, in a form of robotics in which their creations are actually controlled from the ground but moving in space.   West Lafayette competed for the second time this year, getting second in the country

The tournament itself is designed to imitate real life challenges.   “The spheres fly to their starting positions, which are in one half of a cube, before the round starts. Once they are at the correct position(which is determined by various sensors in the robot) the round begins. The first stage of the round keeps the spheres in the starting half of the cube where they “make” small dust clouds.” Said Adam Anderson’14.  The teams then try and “clean up” the other robots dust clouds, and the one that gets the most wins.

Cade Kane’14 said that the team received a tour of the MIT Museum  before the awards ceremony.  The competition is also about creating future careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, or STEM fields.

“Saturday we got up early and went back to campus for a talk from a MIT’s admissions counselor and tour of campus,” said Kane. “It was beautiful.”

Currently, about 100 teams from the United States, and an additional 30 from Europe participate, but the event has only been going on since 2009.

Adam Anderson’14 is a member of the Zero Robotics team. Anderson also programs for the FIRST robotics team.

“The event is becoming more popular, but I think the main reason more teams are joining is because it’s becoming more known and is pretty prestigious”  Hwang said.  The school team is sponsored by Mr. Florence, but the competition is sponsored by organizations like DARPA, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and NASA. 

“I really like the fact that you can program something that you can see fly on the International Space Station. It really gives your work a sense of meaning,” said Hwang.