Tinkering School Mars Missions
Developing low cost robotics opportunities for pandemic audiences and beyond.
Welcome to the Kapoor Lava Tube
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was brought into a group of youth and adult collaborators who aimed to build a summer camp that enabled physical collaboration from a distance. We built a simulated Martian lava tube, a fleet of 22 internet-operable robots, and a narrative that enabled and inspired students to participate from around the world. The program evolved into developing a museum exhibit and interactive workshops for the Exploratorium and an in-person robotics summer camp on a low-cost platform called Boxbot.
The view from a "Burly" rover
Our exhibit at the Exploratorium
The Wheel Lab invited participants to design their own wheels for a Mars rover
Light Painting used long-exposure photography to generate spirograph-like patterns from the robots
The Boxbot, a cardboard robot that is infinitely customizeable. One of the design criteria was that we had to feel OK hot-glueing a popcicle stick to it.