One Giant (Space) Leap for Aussie School Students How can we nurture the next generation of diverse, bright and well-rounded students with a passion for STEM and the space industry? The answer lies in an air leak on the International Space Station (ISS) – and only NASA’s Astrobee is able to undertake the emergency repairs to fix it! This is the storyline of the Kibo Robot Programming Challenge (Kibo RPC) for 2021 - a virtual programming challenge where students develop code for the Astrobee robot, currently located on the ISS. The Kibo RPC is an international competition hosted by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in collaboration with NASA and the space agencies of the Asia-Pacific region. Whilst the preliminary rounds of the competition occur on a simulated version of the ISS, the final round with the top 9 teams takes place live from onboard the ISS Kibo research and education module, where code written by the student teams is uploaded directly onto the Astrobee. The Kibo RPC aims to put school and university students in touch with other bright STEM students across the AsiaPacific. Another aim is to facilitate current research and development taking place in some of the space industry’s top organisations. The program is designed to develop students’ educational and professional goals to a higher level by giving them the opportunity to pick up new coding languages, learn from actual Astrobee code, and develop creative ways to solve novel problems such as effective robot navigation in microgravity. Coincidentally, the competition commenced in 2020 around the same time as the COVID-19 pandemic hit. It provided a perfect opportunity for online learning to prove its success in creating STEM programs that teach skills essential to a global, collaborative space industry. The 2020 competition was a huge success, and Kibo RPC returned in 2021 with a new storyline, more teams registered and an increase in participating countries. The atmosphere of the whole competition is positive – countries have the opportunity to work together, to come up with solutions to challenges and develop each other’s coding and problem solving skills. The One Giant Leap Australia Foundation (OGLA), supported by the Australian Space Agency, hosted
Australia’s 2021 preliminary trial round with 15 participating teams. Each team had about a month to learn JavaScript and the Android programming environment, simulate their code on JAXA’s Astrobee simulator, and attain the highest score possible by meeting certain criteria, being accurate, and working under various initial conditions. Along the way, OGLA provided their guidance by hosting free regular live-online Kibo RPC tutorial sessions. The value of collaboration and approachability during the competition was clear – highlighted by last year’s finalists Galen VEX. The team shared their experiences and helped other teams solve problems they had encountered during the 2020 competition. This showcases the collaborative nature of Kibo RPC members. The aim is to nurture, facilitate and grow our space industry. To determine which team would represent Australia in the International competition, the preliminary Australian trial round was held in early July. Dream Rover from Sydney Robotics Club reigned supreme with an “A” score, successfully completing all the tasks set out and fixing the hypothetical leak on the ISS. Most interestingly, Dream Rover is a team of Sydney school students. One of the team members is Annabel, an 11 year old student from Artarmon Public School. Incredibly, all Australian finalist teams have been of a school age, even though university teams have also entered. This proves that there is a plethora of bright young students who would benefit from STEM outreach opportunities leading to future career paths. In late July, the representative teams selected from each of the nine countries came together virtually for the International Programming Skills round conducted by JAXA. This competition was held to provide not only a ranking order but also to arrange the team schedule for the finals to be held in a live hook-up with the ISS in September where their code will actually control the robots in real time and not use a simulator. The Australian team, Dream Rover, took seventh place out of the nine countries. It is a compliment that Dream Rovers are a NSW based team from 5 different schools and most of the other countries are from universitybased teams.
