page_title: Zero Robotics
section_title: Objectives of tournaments
hierarchical_section_title: Zero Robotics / Objectives of tournaments
caption_attribution_description: English: Interior components of a SPHERES module.
context_page_description: Zero Robotics is an international high school programming competition where students control robotic SPHERES aboard the International Space Station. Each year teams of students work to produce code capable of performing in a game that can be deployed on the SPHERES. This game generally contains elements such as docking with objects, moving objects, and destroying targets within a bounded area while monitoring fuel usage.
  Initial stages of the competition occur online with free team registration in the United States, Australia and for ESA member countries and limited registration for international teams. Teams are traditionally monitored by adult mentors and code submitted through the MIT website. Finalists compete in a live championship aboard the ISS. An astronaut conducts the final competition while communicating to teams through a live feed.
context_section_description: Participants compete together to win a technically challenging game, motivated by a problem of current interest to DARPA, NASA and MIT. Depending on the challenge, students must program their satellites to complete certain objectives (to avoid obstacles, collect virtual objects, destroy targets, etc.) while preserving the primary resources (fuel, energy charges, etc.) and complete the challenge within certain limits of time and space for writing code. The student's software must be able to control factors such as the speed of the satellite, the rotation, the direction of travel, and many others, to be able to find the perfect algorithm to achieve the purpose and meet the challenges in the shortest possible time than their opponents.
  The difficulty lies in the fact that the programs are autonomous in the sense that submitted code will last for the duration of the competition (and across multiple matches) and you can not control or modify their execution.  Additionally there is a limit on the programmable memory of the SPHERES, limiting the available coding practices.
caption: SPHERES internal components
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