SGVHAK Rover at Caltech Science for March

SGVLUG has a booth at Caltech's Science for March event which means another public outing for SGVHAK Rover. The event itself featured a lot of groups affiliated with Caltech showing what they have offer to the visiting public. The weather cooperated with a nice sunny day for people to stop in for a look.

Pasadena City College, which is basically next door, had a strong presence with many student groups showing off their projects. Here's a machine that takes poker chips in a chute (right) and sorts them by color into bins (lower left).

JPL brought in some model rover wheels. These were not made with the same material of real rover wheels, but they are actual size. They represent the wheels of Sojourner, the Spirit/Opportunity twins, and Curiosity rover.

Our SGVHAK rover started the day sitting on the table.

But it didn't take long before the rover hit the road and started demonstrating its chops by climbing some bricks.

A demonstration of suspension capability is to sit down in front and let the rover climb over your legs. One of the times this was demonstrated, it caught the attention of a bunch of children who ran and lined up to be run over too.

All this climbing was great, but it took a toll on the rover. The stresses started loosening up some screws and the right-front wheel started dangling on one final loose screw.

A little field repair was in order - stealing screws from elsewhere on the rover to get it back up and running again.