See below for more information on a project opportunity by the Husk Robotics team:
Husky Robotics is looking to recruit UW students interested in an opportunity to do design work for next year’s science module on our Mars rover.
Over the next few months, our instrumentation team has a lot of design work to do to developing several systems integral to our performance at the University Rover Challenges in Hanksville, UT and Drumheller, Canada.
We have four major project areas:
1. Soil collection system. A mechanical means of transporting subsurface soil into a container while ejecting potentially contaminated surface soil, and if possible, a decontamination system for the soil collector.
2. Soil containment system: a physically separated soil caching system that allows for multiple sample sites to be visited without cross-contamination, and sufficient access for various soil analysis tests to be carried out in both wet and dry formats.
3. Raman Spectrometer Development: A long-standing and ambitious project to design a Raman spectrometer capable of providing meaningful soil composition analysis mounted to our rover, incorporating optics, electronics, mechanics, and vibration-proofing of structures.
4. Soil Analysis suite: While we have several sensors we’ve been using to characterize the soil and look for signs of life or life-inhibiting factors (eg, amino acid assay, microscope for mineralogy and biological analysis, thermometer and UV exposure, etc), we would benefit from having a wider variety of sensors to characterize the soil and its contents with an eye towards potential human colonization of Mars. The development of a sensor package to, for example, determine iron content of a sample would be much appreciated.
This is an excellent opportunity to add to project portfolios, and get experience working in an engineering and science team environment. Further, instrumentation members are vital to our competition team (during the weeks of June 1-3 for URC and/or August 12-15 for CIRC) to present on-site findings to professionals in the field of Xenobiology, Geology, and the siting and stability of structures of a theoretical Mars colony.
The deadline is coming up very quickly (November 30th!), but we’re happy to answer any questions you might have at uwrobots@uw.edu or via our facebook/instagram @uwrobots.
Our application is up at huskyrobotics.me, and the attached flyer here.