MAREA amateur radio robot – Image credit ARRL
An ARRL article describes the Mars Lander Amateur Radio Robotics Exploration Activity.
NASA has been doing some exciting explorations of Mars with robots, currently Opportunity and Curiosity, which are maneuvered on the Martian surface by remote control.
These robots collect and analyze soil samples and relay the results of these distant experiments back to Earth. While students can learn about these experiments in newspapers, scientific journals, on the Internet or TV, wouldn’t a more active approach provide a more engaging learning experience? Why not let students experience the same thrills as the NASA scientists and engineers through a simulation that they conduct in their own classrooms?
The basic concept of MAREA uses robotic movement commands that are attached in the text portion of an Automatic Position Reporting System (APRS) packet transmission. The APRS packet with the attached commands is sent from a “mission control” school via the terrestrial APRS network or, when possible, even via the Amateur Radio station on the passing International Space Station (ISS), to a “ground station” school. At the ground station school the command packet is received and the command data is linked by UHF radio to the “Mars” robot for execution.
The MAREA system components consist of:
• the typical 2 meter packet capable ham radio transceiver (or receiver if reception only is desired)
• a computer running a free APRS packet display program, sound card TNC (Terminal Node Controller) and serial loopback software packages
• UHF data link transceivers
• an instructional robot
Read the full ARRL article at http://www.arrl.org/marea-ham-radio-robotics