Fluorometry & Drill System
Problem statement
The potential for life to exist on other planets has captivated people’s imaginations for decades. Although the idea of humanoid life in other galaxies is intriguing, scientists are looking within our solar system – at Mars – for signs of life, such as proteins or nucleic acids. One organization encouraging the exploration of life on Mars is the Mars Society, a non-profit organization [1]. The Mars Society hosts a competition called the University Rover Challenge to encourage the development of the future of rovers. Our client, the Wisconsin Robotics team, competed in this challenge last year and will compete in the 2025 challenge. Last year, the science sub-team – the team responsible for creating the system responsible for detecting signs of life – spent months developing their system, only for it to fail at the competition. Understandably, they were distraught by this failure. However, after some time, their failure motivated them to improve for this year. When it came time to reflect on their design and see what could be better, they were frustrated to learn that the design decisions had not been well documented and prototype test data was hard to come by. The science team lead, Katie Perkins, approached our senior design team for help this year in building a thoroughly tested, well documented science system for this year’s competition. Our team will be responsible for developing the systems to fulfill the detection of life requirements. The system will be able to penetrate, collect, and test the simulated Martian regolith while preventing cross-contamination between sites. We will be able to take inspiration from current NASA rovers, such as Curiosity, which uses a masonry bit and auger system to collect samples [2]. However, NASA’s sample collection methods are far too complex and expensive to replicate. We will also take ideas from previous competition rovers, but we will need to design a custom solution that can be easily integrated and removed from the rover chassis of this year’s Wisconsin Robotics Rover. Ultimately, our functional design will be well documented to ensure that the current and future members of Wisconsin Robotics will be able to easily follow our design process and adjust for future rover challenges. [1] “About the Mars Society,” The Mars Society. Accessed: Sep. 20, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://www.marssociety.org/about/ [2] “Views of Curiosity’s Drill – NASA Science.” Accessed: Sep. 25, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://science.nasa.gov/resource/views-of-curiositys-drill/
Team members 
Allison Willhite – facilitator
Ren Babu – communicator
Robert Marlow – accountant
Grace O’Brien – admin
Client
Katie Perkins
Wisconsin Robotics