Mars Rover Dog Camp First Planning Meeting

Written by Russell Wang

The team

On November 16, the Robotics Outreach team met together at Catherine’s house to plan for the upcoming 4-day Mars Rover Dog Camp. In this camp, we will be using Petoi’s Bittle, a hand-sized robotic dog to teach coding, robotics, and problem-solving.

The Petoi Bittle

This camp will be held at NASA Ames Research Center Building 3 with two sessions on the week of the 22nd of December and the 29th of December, with both Thursdays skipped.

The team met together to discuss whether any other materials were needed, how to create the Mars environment, and team availability. We figured that we needed a lot of  materials, in particular extra batteries for the BittleX because of the short battery life.  For the Mars environment, it has been decided to use clay to create the surface. Then, we stick 3D printed components onto the surface. This introduces many other materials that we need. We need clay, a tarp to put the environment onto, filament for the 3D components, as well as Clorox to clean any messes that might happen.

We plan to start creating the Mars environment and test it. Next meeting, a curriculum will be discussed and confirmed.