If you grew up watching cartoons, you may be familiar with Rosie, the robot housekeeper who made life easier for the Jetson family and their dog Astro. A group of Brookwood HS students is hoping their time-saving prototype for meal preparation will help make life a little easier for the three astronauts who live on the International Space Station (ISS). However, to get their innovation— the Astrobutler— to the next level (and maybe a trip into space), the students need your help!
The Astrobutler is one of 10 finalists in a national contest to automate or optimize a product or process used by the astronauts on the International Space Station. Contest entrants took on the challenge to design and build a model of their solution using Texas Instruments (TI) technology and coding.
Members of the public are invited to vote for their favorite design— the Astrobutler (hint, hint)— before voting closes Sept. 14. You can vote once per device— cellphone, laptop, and computer. Once health and safety conditions permit, the top five finishers will take a sponsor-paid trip to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to present their projects, in-person, to ISS Program Office personnel. In addition, the top three projects that receive the most votes will receive TI graphing calculators and other prizes.
Vote to help Brookwood HS students send ‘Astrobutler’ to NASA’s Johnson Space Center (and maybe the International Space Station!) The deadline to vote is Sept. 14.
Here’s the problem that Astrobutler is designed to solve: The Space Station’s Potable Water Dispenser is used by astronauts to prepare their meals. However, warming food is difficult in zero gravity and it can take up to 30 minutes to warm just one meal! The Brookwood team’s robotic attachment is designed to automate the food preparation process to take back those 90 minutes of lost time that astronauts could be using to exercise or conduct cutting-edge research.
The Brookwood Innovation, Technology, and Engineering Squad (BITES) Team— sophomores William Li, Sam Barskiy, and Ethan Shust— did all of their machine coding using a TI Inspire Calculator and used other tech from TI to design Astrobutler. Stephen Griffith, an engineering and robotics teacher at Five Forks MS, sponsored the team… from afar.
“The awesome thing about this process was utilizing the design process from a distance,” Mr. Griffith says of the project, which has been completed during the pandemic. “There was never a time during this project that any of us were ever in a room together. Instead, we moved parts from front porch to front porch, used zoom meetings, email, etc., for communication.”
Good luck, Astrobutler!