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Bangladesh getting ready to explore distant planets

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https://www.thedailystar.net/bytes/bangladesh-getting-ready-explore-distant-planets-1589509

12:00 AM, June 11, 2018 / LAST MODIFIED: 06:37 PM, June 11, 2018
Bangladesh getting ready to explore distant planets

Repair workstation designed by Team Attendent

Team Attendant---a robotics research team of Independent University, Bangladesh has achieved 6th position globally in an international robotics competition called University Rover Challenge held at the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in Southern Utah, USA.

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IUB Attendant at URC 2018 collecting sample soil from unknown terrain



The University Rover Challenge (URC) is the world's premier robotics competition for university students organised by the Mars Society, sponsored by Protocase and Microsoft, held annually in the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) southern Utah in the United States. URC challenges student teams to design and build the next generation of Mars rovers that will one day work alongside astronauts exploring the Red Planet. Following a rigorous two-stage down-selection process, 36 teams were invited to the field competition at MDRS. 35 teams from ten countries arrived with their rovers ready for the exciting challenges in the Utah desert.


There are five tasks to be done by the rover in this competition:

i. System Acceptance Review Task (Audio visual Proposal)

ii. Science Cache Task (collect and analyse soil samples)

iii. Extreme Retrieval and Delivery Task (rescue and provide support to astronaut in need)

iv. Equipment Servicing Task (service remotely located research equipment) and

v. Autonomous Traversal Task (reach remote locations through unknown terrains using Artificial Intelligence).

Unlike last year, the Mars Society managed to make the competition much more challenging but IUB Attendant planned and executed their tasks well enough to achieve the first position in Asia. In addition to that, last year Team Attendant from Independent University, Bangladesh placed 10th and this year the team came back stronger and secured 6th position at the URC 2018 after competing against 36 tough contenders from renowned universities all around the world such as Cornell University, Stanford University, University of Michigan from USA, University of Toronto, Canada, Monash University from Australia and IIT Madras and IIT Bombay from India.


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Team Attendent's rover collecting water bottle (Left), to give it to injured astronaut

Team Attendant was sponsored by Independent University, Bangladesh, ICT Division of the Government of Bangladesh, City Group and Energies Power Corporation.
 
It's really pleasing to see that universities are developing up to date, practical skills in BD. Well done Team Attendant.

http://urc.marssociety.org/home/about-urc/urc2018-scores



Wow - These kids are learning a lot of new things building the robot. Servo mechanisms, optics, optronics, laser cutting metal, edm techniques, may be even a bit of pneumatics. The design of the wheel itself was really advanced.

Scored so high and above so many renowned universities. :-)

Very happy about their effort! :-)

Next year, shoot for first position by redesign and incremental improvements to transport mechanism as well as the arms.

So, there were three teams from Bangladesh that participated in URC2018,

AIUB, BRAC University and IUB, the last team mentioned scored the highest

In the video see these at 2:35,

 
Here are the scores and positions for all three BD teams

IUB - 293.48 - 6th rank - Asia's top
BRAC U- 228.88 -13th rank
AIUB - 182.64 - 26th rank

For full list and information go to source scorecard
Source: http://urc.marssociety.org/home/about-urc/urc2018-scores

Next year, shoot for first position by redesign and incremental improvements to transport mechanism as well as the arms.
IUB team's performed poorly on "Autonomous Traversal Task" where they got 0 points. Don't know what autonomous traversal task is so not sure how hard or easy it would be improve their current model to do better on that.
 
We have practically $0.0 funding in space research. Unless it changes, all these student projects are meaningless since after graduation these students will have nothing to do in the country and will leave for working abroad.
 
IUB team's performed poorly on "Autonomous Traversal Task" where they got 0 points. Don't know what autonomous traversal task is so not sure how hard or easy it would be improve their current model to do better on that.

I believe that task scores how the suspension negotiates an obstacle vertically as well as horizontally.

Design of the suspension and the material comes into play here, don't know if the IUB team,

1. Used GFRP or carbon fibre suspension arms
2. Used weight reduction techniques on major motive components such as motors and gears such as using alloys, CFRP, GFRP instead of steel, and most importantly
3. Kept the center of gravity at a low level to aid stability (battery placement which the heaviest component usually).

These are what separates a winning design from an also-ran. Of course in the Radio control hobby market you can get almost every component used in these rovers in different sizes. To save money, they should have built a 25% size demonstrator first to refine the design and work out the bugs. Then - you can build a full size one based on the success of the small one....

Here are the scores and positions for all three BD teams

IUB - 293.48 - 6th rank - Asia's top
BRAC U- 228.88 -13th rank
AIUB - 182.64 - 26th rank

I believe there were only 3 teams from Bangladesh and 5 from India this year (none other from the subcontinent) although in 2017 there were many more teams from Bangladesh (5?)?

Not very many teams from Asian countries either. What does that say??

Ahsanullah UST and other teams from Bangladesh were involved in 2017 that did not participate this year.

I believe we could have these competitions Asia-wide basis or even just for the subcontinent and see who comes up with best design and performance. For our engineering students these concept demonstrators are perfect for stoking skills and lighting collective fires in their psyche to bring their talented efforts to fruition.

We have practically $0.0 funding in space research. Unless it changes, all these student projects are meaningless since after graduation these students will have nothing to do in the country and will leave for working abroad.

Well before Mars Rover, moon rover should be our goal. Even before that - a satellite launch vehicle should be a larger goal. But not everything happens in serial fashion. As we have seen nowadays - a lot of changes are disruptive in nature.

As our GDP improves, even private sector will come out with funding, these rovers from Bangladesh were all funded privately, govt. can definitely provide heavy-duty tax-breaks for corporations funding this sort of research.

Improvements in GDP (and of course in providing safe stable places to live and work) are key in reversing brain drain, which has already started to happen in Bangladesh with homegrown talent going back from Western countries.
 
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Well before Mars Rover, moon rover should be our goal. Even before that - a satellite launch vehicle should be a larger goal. But not everything happens in serial fashion. As we have seen nowadays - a lot of changes are disruptive in nature.

But we are moving in no direction as far as space research is concerned. What surprises me is the absence of any substantial involvement of SPARRSO in our first satellite launch or its operation which happens to be our national space agency. Instead, the satellite is owned and managed by BTRC which is just a telecommunication regulatory authority and has no technical expertise on space and relevant sectors.
 
But we are moving in no direction as far as space research is concerned. What surprises me is the absence of any substantial involvement of SPARRSO in our first satellite launch or its operation which happens to be our national space agency. Instead, the satellite is owned and managed by BTRC which is just a telecommunication regulatory authority and has no technical expertise on space and relevant sectors.

I believe the mission of SPARRSO is (according to Wiki),

"space and remote sensing technology, in the field of Agriculture, Forestry, Fisheries, Geology, Cartography, Water Resources, Land use, Weather, Environment, Geography, Oceanography, Science, Education, science-based Knowledge and other related space research areas. It also perform research activities for developing this technology and its practical application."

In other words, use of foreign satellites for remote sensing, GIS type uses to help agriculture and fishery yields by providing that information to the fishery dept. and Ministry of Agriculture, among others.

They are a remote sensing organization, not a satellite launch regulator or partner, as far as I know.

Since Bangabandhu-1 is a communications satellite - they have no involvement with it since that satellite has no remote sensing feature.

Maybe when we get a remote sensing satellite, our own eye-in-the-sky, then we can involve SPARRSO to parse the results, which is where their skillset lies.
 

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