Sometime in 2010, I was invited to give a talk about radiation effects on electronic components at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. This was part of a proposed mission to Jupiter.
While I was there, I got to see the Curiosity rover before it set off for Mars the following year. As you may recall, Curiosity was the first rover to use the sky crane soft-landing system (previous rovers had used a combination of parachutes, retrorockets, and airbags for landing, but Curiosity was deemed too heavy for this technique).
I remember one of the engineers telling me about the meetings they had. They started with a bunch of diverse ideas and gradually discarded them for one reason or another until the sky crane was the only one left. Then they looked at each other and said something like, “We can’t seriously be thinking of doing this… can we?” They could, and they did, and the rest is history.
Curiosity was followed by the Perseverance rover, which set off for Mars in 2020 and also used the sky crane technique. The rover's main goals are to search for signs of ancient life, study the planet's geology and climate, and collect rock and regolith samples for possible return to Earth by a future mission.
I love pretty much anything related to space exploration, so I was delighted to hear from the folks at CircuitMess. It seems these little rascals have created a consumer kit version of Perseverance that lets anyone assemble a super-detailed Mars rover replica from scratch.
This bodacious beauty is powered by a dual-core ESP32, includes a functional robotic arm for sample collection, and features an AI-enabled camera for autonomous navigation and object detection.
You can code things in Python, C++, or use a visual drag-and-drop interface. I’m told that this is accessible to anyone over 11, so hopefully, even I would have a fighting chance at getting it working.
I cannot even begin to imagine how much fun folks could have with this kit. Actually, that’s not true because I can imagine how much fun people will have with this kit.
And, while we’re at it, I can also imagine how much fun I could have with some of the other offerings on the CircuitMess site, such as their programmable, NASA-themed Artemis Watch 2.0 smartwatch with activity tracking & more.
Maybe for Christmas…
love this, and the fact that it’s based on an ESP32 is exciting!! I didn’t know they sold consumer kit versions. Very interesting stuff.
I must admit that I didn’t pay too much attention to the ESP32 when it came out (so many microcontrollers, so little time), but it’s certainly proved itself in myriad interesting applications.