"Building a Self-Driving Lunar Exploration Rover with My Own Hands"

KARI Holds the 1st Space Exploration Software Competition

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Bong-su] The Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) is hosting the "1st Space Exploration Software Competition" to provide teenagers with the opportunity to experience programming a lunar exploration rover and enhance their software and artificial intelligence coding skills.

This competition, aimed at high school students nationwide, challenges participants to program a rover to autonomously navigate a virtual lunar surface on a computer and complete assigned missions. Similar robot competitions in virtual environments, such as the Space Robotics Challenge, are also held by organizations like NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Teams of three can participate, with an online preliminary round in July and online/offline finals on August 21-22. Awards include one grand prize team (Minister of Science and ICT Award, 5 million KRW scholarship), one excellence award team (KARI Director Award, 3 million KRW scholarship), and two encouragement award teams (KARI Director Award, 1 million KRW scholarship each).

To enable beginners to participate, online courses on robot control programming (ROS) and virtual environment simulation software (Gazebo) will be provided through the competition website. This year’s competition focuses on lunar exploration, with plans to expand future missions to Mars, asteroids, and other space exploration themes.

Lee Sang-ryul, Director of KARI, stated, “In the new space era, as the convergence of software, artificial intelligence technology, and the space industry accelerates, this competition aims to nurture future talents with software power and increase teenagers’ interest in space exploration.”