Author: Rishab Sharma - MAIT , New Delhi
India has a prominent spot in the space research domain and stands tall along with the developed nations. It has added one more feather to its cap, when on September 26, 2016, India's space agency ISRO launched eight satellites from one rocket into two different orbits. ISRO has been leading the space research since its inception in 1969 and demonstrated its technical prowess by sending “MOM: Mission on Mars” on a minuscule budget. Taking inspiration from these missions, e-Yantra has developed the theme “Cross a Crater” for eYRC-2016. Consider the following scenario: e-Yantra has sent its rover for an expedition to the red planet Mars. The mission is to collect samples to determine if life sustaining factors exist in this planet. While returning to the Base Station from a different route the rover has encountered a huge crater that it needs to cross. The crater has two paths comprising of cavities along the way. These cavities need to be filled using appropriate boulders by taking a feed from the nearest satellite to make them traversable. The above scenario has been simplified and abstracted as an arena for this theme. The arena represents a crater and comprises of two partially traversable bridges, Bridge 1 and Bridge 2 with cavities at random positions leading to the Base Station. The rover takes the feed from a camera directly above it that guides it towards filling the cavities using conical structures and navigating the bridge. Navigating each of the bridges involve different challenges. The rover has to traverse using one of these bridges and reach the Base Station. The teams have to design, program and control an autonomous robot and use image processing techniques to complete the tasks. The team which traverses the bridge and reaches the base in the least possible time will be declared the Winner
