Seattle, Washington

Experiment Title: Robot Pointer

We’ll have a small, battery powered, free floating robot with a light sensor grid. The robot’s primary task will be to keep the itself pointed at the same direction in space, whatever its intital placement and spin. This might be useful for deploying a remote camera outside a space station to follow and video record an astronaut’s motion.

By mechanically rotating masses along X, Y, and Z axes, the robot will float in free space and will respond to drifting by rotating its pointer toward a flashlight sized light source. On board student-generated software will control the robot, continually adjusting the robot’s orientation to point continually toward the light source.

We also plan, for the second team’s flight, to remove visible light sensors, and re-equip the robot with infrared sensors, so that it can potentially follow a human, or a human-equipped with an infrared beacon, without interfering with a video camera.

The robot’s accelerations will be recorded using Vernier Software’s LabPro data collection system, using a 3-axis accelerometer probe.

The robot will also sing two songs, a happy song when it’s on target, and a sad song if it loses pointing contact with the light source..

The robot will be placed during each short freefall in an increasingly difficult variety of attitudes and spins, and will demonstrate orienting behaviors.

L-R: Dwayne Pittman, NASA mentor; Amy Schwentor; Judson Miller; Eric Muhs, lead teacher