The South African National Space Agency (SANSA) and the Cars4Mars initiative have announced the winners of the Cars4Mars African Rover Challenge. The challenge, in case it’s not obvious, saw African students from around the continent building Mars exploration rover prototypes.
The final was held at a place called the Mars Yard, part of a SANSA facility in Hartebeeshoek in Gauteng. Eighteen teams from around Africa, comprising 120 students, participated in the final test that examined traversal capability and autonomous operation — two key factors in a functional Mars rover.
Cars4Mars for Africa
The Mars Yard obstacle course tested participating robotic rovers across a Traversal Mission and an AI Autonomous Mission. Traversal involved remotely driving the robot over the course, with the aim of retrieving an object left somewhere by the panel of judges. The autonomous mission is exactly what it sounds like. The rovers had their vision systems tested. This involved identifying objects using the robotic vehicles’ vision systems. The more advanced these systems were, the more points teams were awarded.
Teams from South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Kenya were among those who took awards at the Cars4Mars event. Milestone High School’s (Zimbabwe) Cyberstorm took first place overall. Rhodes University and Stellenbosch University’s Inadeptus Mechanicus took second place. Tech Tonic from Bryanston High School placed third. The Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) unsurprisingly took top honors for Traversal and AI Autonomous performance with two different robots. Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology team took the Best Design category with its Vulcan rover.
The Cars4Mars event was judged this year by an international panel consisting of Lukasz Gliwinski, Kuba Kopec and Adam Zagrajek. Cars4Mars founder Basia Nasiorowska said, “Today was a wonderful reminder of what young people can achieve when they are given the opportunity to build, test and solve real challenges. We saw wheels come off, AI vision systems struggle to recognise objects and teams having to adapt in the moment but they kept going.”
