NASA Will Pay You $1.5 Million to Build the Next Rover
Your robot must move around unfamiliar terrain, find and carefully collect objects, and return to home base. No GPS.
NASA wants to pay you to build the next Mars rover.
This article is for subscribers only.
In June, NASA invited a small horde of robots and their makers to Massachusetts to compete for a chance to win as much as $1.5 million.
The Sample Return Robot Challenge, one of NASA's Centennial Challenges, is designed to simulate the object retrieval tasks and abilities of rovers operating far from Earth. The competition, held at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, drew about 20 teams this year, vying to pass level one to qualify for the round with the big prize. Five made it.