Day 1 Schedule

Good morning everyone.  Today will be our first day at JSC with the Rover Hawk, where we'll have our first chance to try our robot on the JSC Rock Yard.  The competition's schedule today is for practicing with our rovers and to make any necessary tweaks to the robots.  Our team members back in Lowell at the NERVE Center will be driving the robot, just as they will be during the competition.

This afternoon, from 3-3:30 CDT, the rovers will be weighed.  According to the competition rules, the lightest robot picks their competition time slot first, followed by the other rovers in order of increasing weight:

The day of the competition, on-site team members are not allowed to communicate any information about the course or the other teams’ performance to their off-site team members. However, teams going later in the day can watch the camera feed from the other team’s rovers. This affords an advantage to teams that go later in the competition. NASA and NIA have developed a method for teams to compete for time slots they desire – based on the weight of Team rovers. A 45-kg mass limit has been established for each rover. Because NASA has an interest in reducing mass wherever possible, we will allow the lightest rover to select the time slot of their choice. The second lightest will have second choice, and so forth.

Throughout our design process, our goal was to have as light of a robot as possible.  We eagerly anticipate finding out how we did relative to the other teams.