So to begin at the beginning, this whole thing started at a Game Jam at NASA Ames (Dark Side of the Jam). Gaming and NASA together? For 48 hours? Count me in (as well as Angelo, Nick, Lita, Jose, and Yekta).

It was exciting, although there was this whole speaking section at the beginning that was more of a recruitment for NASA then a source of inspiration, which had me wondering where these kinds of events were back when I was in college for Aerospace Engineering. If Pete Worden, Dave Korsmeyer, Ross Beyer, Terry Fong, Greg Schmidt, and Mike Dudley presented to one of my engineering classes, they would’ve been mobbed by earnest students by the hundreds. On second thought I can understand why they don’t. Too much NASA goodness packed together can cause the student population to go wild.

B.R.O.V.E.R (concept and some of the demo) was developed during all this, a game trying to merge the cool-factor of advance gaming techniques and the (albeit secondary) mission of NASA; to inspire the future generation to engage and invest in science, space, and engineering advancement. The concept is essentially a “build-a-rover” that tasks you to accomplish mission objectives with the subsystems you place on the rover during design. Then you “program” it and watch it attempt to complete the mission. It sounds simple, but the field-of-view of the terrain and actions available are determined by the parts and systems you choose for the rover. So if you don’t add wheels you don’t move, or if you don’t add a camera you can’t see anything. We tried to model the game play after the engineering iterative process, which can be at times aggravating and intellectually stimulating.

So that’s the long and short of it. And we are excited to share our stories during development.