{"id":201218,"date":"2024-07-30T11:19:30","date_gmt":"2024-07-30T21:19:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=201218"},"modified":"2024-07-30T14:01:37","modified_gmt":"2024-07-31T00:01:37","slug":"uh-hilo-students-rover-global-testing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2024\/07\/30\/uh-hilo-students-rover-global-testing\/","title":{"rendered":"UH<\/abbr> Hilo students upgrade planetary rover for global testing"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>
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From left, Jayden Matsunaka, Daniel Malone and Richard Sevao are part of group that worked on the Helelani planetary rover.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A dedicated group of software engineering<\/a> students at the University of Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> at Hilo has completed a year-long project to upgrade the software on a planetary rover. The rover, named Helelani, will be used for testing by space agencies around the world.<\/p>\n

Helelani weighs 700 pounds and is equipped with a variety of instruments and imaging systems. It can be controlled remotely and is designed to navigate the rugged terrain on Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> Island, which is similar to the landscapes on the Moon and Mars.<\/p>\n

UH<\/abbr> Hilo students AJ Garcia, Daniel Malone, Jaden Matsunaka and Richard Sevao served as interns at the campus\u2019 Pacific International Space Center for Exploration Systems<\/a> (PISCES). PISCES is a program that focuses on research and education related to Earth and space exploration.<\/p>\n

\"rover\"
Helelani being tested at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority or NELHA<\/abbr> in Kailua Kona.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Under the guidance of Christian Andersen, PISCES research director, the students updated the rover\u2019s software code. They also received support from H. Keith Edwards, a computer science professor who mentored the students in a two-semester software engineering class.<\/p>\n

“This is a good type of project for software engineering classes since students are forced to work with someone else\u2019s code and understand how it works, which is quite similar to what happens in their first software development job,” said Edwards.<\/p>\n

Hands-on Learning<\/h2>\n

Undergraduates at UH<\/abbr> Hilo use the rover for hands-on experience in robotics, engineering and programming. Each year, a group of Edwards\u2019 students work on the rover\u2019s hardware and software systems as part of an internship program.<\/p>\n

According to Edwards, the project gave students the opportunity to learn about the structure of the code that runs Helelani and understand how it works.<\/p>\n

“They were also able to update the operating system for the mission control station and were able to get the code base to work with the new operating system,” said Edwards.<\/p>\n

Next: Fine-tuning a 360-degree camera<\/h2>\n

The students also experimented with implementing a new 360-degree camera into the rover. The work will continue with a new group of students this coming school year.<\/p>\n

For more go to UH<\/abbr> Hilo Stories.<\/a><\/p>\n

–By Susan Enright<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UH<\/abbr> Hilo software engineering students upgrade software on a planetary rover to be used by space agencies around the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[182,1168,1642,14],"class_list":["post-201218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-news","tag-engineering","tag-robotics","tag-software-engineering","tag-uh-hilo","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201218"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":201251,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201218\/revisions\/201251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}