BYU Mars Rover

Meet Grant Thompson, our Software Subteam Lead, bringing invaluable experience and strategic prowess to our team. His expertise in algorithmic programming has been crucial in overcoming complex software challenges like obstacle detection and avoidance.

Grant's leadership ensures organizational focus by aligning objectives with our overarching plan, organizing workflows, and fostering collaboration. A deep trust in his team members allows him to focus on managerial tasks enabling his teammates to dedicate their focus to the rover system.

A balance of autonomous leadership, a robust standard of excellence, and his own hands-on involvement on the rover enable Grant to be an asset to the team as a whole, and the perfect person to lead the software subteam. 🚀

🔬 Exploring Martian Soil: Our rover's science module is a marvel of innovation! Equipped with a Flavin Adenine Dinucleotide (FAD) life detector and auger drill sample collection system, our rover can collect samples with precision. Using computer vision in Python, the rover analyzes green light emanated by the sample while exciting the FAD with blue light and reports a percentage of life detected. During FAD testing, temperature and moisture sensors test the drill sight for life-like conditions of the area.

Guided by expert advice from BYU professors, we target ancient water sites for sampling, maximizing our chances of discovery. Plus, our plans to replace the prototype circuit with a custom PCB and install a second cache on the rover allowing multi sample collection expand our exploration capabilities.🚀

A husband of three years, father of his 18 month old daughter, and indispensable team member, Spencer blends his leadership and organizational skills to spearhead project management and systems integration. Through collaboration with our subteam leads, he steers team tasks, oversees the Rover's budget and weight requirements, and ensures competition readiness. Despite his primary focus on team leadership, Spencer’s technical expertise is impressive.

With a goal to be a Robotics Engineer in extreme environments, Spencer has combined education focused on robotics, mechatronics, and controls with practical experience in CAD, circuit design, Python, MATLAB, C++, and embedded programming. Aside from being one of our two general team leads, Spencer actively works on the electrical subteam in comms and antenna testing to configure the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz modems for optimal communication with the rover.

In addition to working on the Mars Rover team, Spencer is a payload engineer with the BYU Rocketry team. With his help, they have developed a novel battery powered 3D printer capable of printing in zero gravity using “Direct Ink Write” printing. Spencer plans to go to graduate school and has applied to Brigham Young University, University of Utah, and University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana among others.

We are very grateful for Spencer’s contributions to the team, and can confidently say without his leadership, we wouldn’t be the team we are today.

We're thrilled by our rover's strides during mock competition testing! We’ve still got room for growth, but our hard work is paying off. 💪