Kids game Mars Rover in a science event

Last Sunday I was able to finally show a game of mine in a science event in London. In a partnership with Science4you, I presented a simple game that shows kids the basic principles of developing an algorithm for programming a computer.

The idea is simple: you have to control the Mars rover “Opportunity” to reach a certain objective. To do that, and since the delay of communications between Earth and Mars can go from 3 to 22 minutes (depending on the current orbit position), they need to create a whole sequence of commands to make the rover reach it’s destination.

There are 3 simple commands: rotate 90º left, rotate 90º right and move forward.

To input the commands I created a control panel that had those 3 buttons plus a button to be able to delete commands.

I must say that was a very fun afternoon!