AR1

This year, AggieSat Laboratory is hosting an internal competition lovingly named the Student Competition for Autonomous Measurement of Planetary Surfaces (SCAMPS). SCAMPS offers participants the opportunity to develop their systems engineering skills through the design, analysis, building, testing, and operation of small autonomous systems and complementary ground stations. Each team in the competition will submit one vehicle to compete in the Showdown. The vehicles will be deployed simultaneously into an outdoor environment in the Brazos Valley. Somewhere in the area, a low-power beacon will be transmitting a signal. Each vehicle must autonomously, without human input or interference, navigate to the beacon, avoiding obstacles and impassable terrain in the process. Upon reaching the beacon, the vehicle must come to a stop and record the air temperature and wind speed over five (5) minutes. The vehicle must transmit the temperature and wind speed data to its team at the ground station. The mission is complete when the team presents, on their ground station laptop computer, the complete dataset and averages of the temperature and wind speed data to the competition judges.

 

AggieRover1 (AR1) is a small rover being developed to compete in SCAMPS.