NASA robot arm design challenge with prize of up to 5,000 USD

Innovative challenge with NASA's Astrobee robot arm promises to provide an opportunity to show the programming and design talents of every citizen in the world.

Freelancer.com and NASA have teamed up to announce the challenge of designing the Astrobee robotic arm , a robot model designed to fly with astronauts outside the ISS space station.

Astrobee has a fairly compact size, designed to help scientists and engineers test the technology in a zero gravity environment.

However, to find the most perfect design solution, NASA and Freelancer launched the initiative called NASA Robotic Arm Challenges . This initiative includes a total of 14 competitions with prizes ranging from US $ 250-5000, totaling up to nearly US $ 25,000.

Simulation structure of Astrobee.(NASA photo).

The theme of the initiative is the Astrobee robot model, which is currently being developed by NASA Game Changing Development Program scientists and promises to launch in ISS in 2019.

Participants will have to design the robot arm, feature programming, materials and robot operation mechanisms.

Astrobee is one of the latest achievements developed by NASA's SPHERES research. This study includes 3 free-flying satellites on ISS. These satellites flew on the ISS station from 2006 up to now and underwent more than 600 hours of experimentation.

Astrobee will change its perspective on robots, when it can really assist astronauts to accomplish many different tasks, including air quality analysis and positioning of tools on board. Astrobee also has an automatic mode, allowing itself to perform dangerous journeys, beyond the scope of ISS.

For astronauts, Astrobee can be considered an important step in saving time in space research. Winning solutions can be considered integrated into Astrobee robot arm designs for many years to come.