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Have you ever wanted to try your inventions or experiments on Mars? Would you like to experiment with measurements taken on the Martian surface?

OpenCuriosity is an open source, exomars rover (1:5 scale) with arduino as main controller, based on the NASA Curiosity rover. It contains a set of Arduino boards and sensors. The general public will be allowed to use these Arduinos and sensors for their own creative purposes while they are in space. All the people will be allowed to integrate their project in the robot, and the data gathered will be available on the internet in order to share this information with the general public for educational, science or other purposes.

We want to provide affordable space exploration for everyone!

With this project we want to follow the steps of ArduSat created by Nanosatisfi LLC, trying to democratize access to space and opening the doors to a new era of space open source products. OpenCuriosity is the first open source rover which will provide such open access to the general public to the space exploration.

The rover is equipped with Arduino Mega as main processor and more processor nodes . The processor nodes are dedicated to the computing of the experiments (each on one node), the main processor collect the data and control the robot. We have used the 3d printing technology to prototype some parts of this robot.

With their own telemetry system integrated, the robot can send all the data measured to a PC via RF wireless communication protocol in low power consumption mode. The robot use the sensors to sense the obstacles around the area and avoid collision. We integrate on it HD video camera and a laser 2W device to pulverize little amounts of some materials. The robot can store a little quantity of pulverized material in a special enclosure.

In our first prototype, we integrate 2 processors nodes that measure differents parameters (dust, gases, Alpha/Beta/Gamma radiation...). They create a sensor network around the robot. The main procesor control the robot (wheels, laser, colisions...) and the robotic arm with 3 differents tools (laser temperature sensor, drill and laser distance meter) integrated in a rotatory toolholder.

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