Journey to conquer Mars
The space has long held a special attraction for us and different generations throughout the evolution of humankind has resorted to different ways to answer our questions about the infinite universe.
To us Mars has always appeared as an angry red dot on the horizon, and was named after the god of war by the Romans. Likewise, ancient Babylonians called the red planet 'Nergel', after their god of war, fire and destruction.
Fast forward to modern day and age: the planets have long lost their deity like status and have become yet another frontier for us humans to conquer in our never ending quest for knowledge and adventure.
We have already landed a rover in Mars, and the aptly name Mars Rover has been diligently sending back photos and data that have helped us make amazing discoveries about the fourth planet from the Sun.
Every year, contests are held by different organizations aimed at providing students with a chance to design a fully functional rover capable of traversing the unknown landscape of Mars while at the same time communicating with the control station down here at earth.
The European Rover Challenge (ERC) is the largest and most reputed of these challenges and is targeted to pushing the boundaries of robotics by providing contestants with an artificially created Mars-like environment where their rovers have to complete a specific set of tasks.
The challenge includes tasks such as exploring the landscape and collecting samples, and the rovers need to have fully functional and autonomous cameras, telemetry system, instant soil sample analysis ability as well as wireless communication capacity.
This year's ERC, held at Poland from 5th-6th September, saw participation of 34 teams from different countries, and two teams from Bangladesh were there to hold up our flag of red and green. IUT Mars Rover Team was selected from Islamic University of Technology (IUT) while BUET Interplaneters represented Bangladesh University of engineering and Technology.
The IUT Mars Rover team consisted of Araf Farayez, TM Moniruzzaman Sunny, Zayed, Abu Shaid Sujon, Nazmus Sakib Adnan, Mirza Muntasir Nishat, Raihan Islam Arnob, Muhammad Usama, Minhaz Us Salakeen Fahme, Asif Iqbal, Fahrial Alam , Mahmudul Alam Shakib and Mohammad Intishar Nur. The team was coordinated by Dr. Khandakar Habibul Kabir, faculty member of the EEE dept. at IUT.
The BUET Interplaneters team was made up of Abul-Al Arbi, SM Shayek Ibn Faruqui, Fazle Elahi Khan, Nawab Md. Aminul Haque, Khaled Bin Mainuddin, Mehedi Hassan, Muhaimin Rahman, Asif Reza Chowdhury, Ashek-E-Rasul, Shoumik Islam, Shah Zaman Anu, Tanveer Alam, Kumar Dipayan Turjo, Nabid Mustafa, Reza Rashid, Abu Ashraf and Sakhawat Hossain.
The Bangladeshi teams showed an exemplary performance, with both teams finishing within the top 20- IUT Mars Rover finished 16th while BUET Interplaneters made it to 19th position among all the teams. In fact, IUT Mars Rover, with a total point of 154.5, was actually ranked the second best team out of Asia- a remarkable achievement by a team participating in the ERC for the first time!
Arif Farayez, frontman of IUT Mars Rover team, stated, "Without the cordial help of concerned teachers, alumnus and more importantly IUT authority, to pull up a project this big would be really impossible." He also thanked the IUT authority for all the assistance provided in making the rover.
Bangladesh has a long record of participating successfully in prestigious international competitions such as these. Hopefully in the coming future, our talented students will transcend the scope of these competitions and we'll actually have locally designed rovers probing the deepest corners of space!
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