Texas A&M University invited 5 Zero Robotics Middle Schools to Johnson Space Center for the Final Event, held August 12th 2016. The winning teams from each state were able to participate in the Final Event, with their code being uploaded to the real SPHERES aboard the International Space Station. The Texas winning team was the Boys and Girls Club of Edinburg, Rio Grande Valley.
This year, the format of the Final Event was changed due to unforeseen circumstances. Two of the SPHERES had degraded flight controls the day of the competition, so the event organizers had to provide a customized code to one SPHERE (which wasn’t able to change it’s position in space, only rotate). Then the competition brackets were changed so that every team played against the custom code provided to the degraded SPHERE. Each team played with their own code. The results of each match were compared against each other, and ranked by total score of the state teams.
For more information, and a full list of results, please click here.