Exploring Hell!

AMII SENSOR proposal is made as a part of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Challenge "Exploring Hell: Avoiding Obstacles on a Clockwork Rover" and has been selected as one of the best submitted proposals from 572 entries received from over 80 countries.
NASA awarded AMII SENSOR proposal as the best prototype.

On this challenge, the global community of innovators and inventors were invited to design a novel avoidance sensor for AREE (Automaton Rover for Extreme Environments) which is intended to explore the surface of Venus.

The challenge required that the proposed sensor must be able to move a 6 cm diameter pin by a minimum of 3 cm with 25 N of force when an obstacle is encountered. This, in turn, will then trigger the rover to back off the obstacle and seek a new pathway forward.

The sensor must reliably respond when encountering:

Slopes greater than 30 degrees (either up or down hill)
- Slopes less than 25 degrees must not trigger the sensor.
Rocks greater than 0.35 meters in height
- Sensor must not trigger for rocks smaller than 0.3 meters in height
Holes/valleys greater than 0.35 meters deep, except for small holes which would not entrap the wheels.
- Sensor must not trigger for holes shallower than 0.3 meters in depth
- Holes narrower than 0.1 meters wide may be ignored by the sensor but it is not required to do so
- Holes less than 0.5 meters long in the direction of travel may be ignored by the sensor but it is not required to do so
  - Holes greater than 0.1 meters wide and greater than 0.5 meters long and greater than 0.35 meters deep must be detected.