PR2012 May 29
By Lydia Seabol AvantStaff Writer
Tuesday
May 29, 2012 at 2:23 PM
Alabama, Shelton Team Wins NASA Lunabotics Competition
A team of University of Alabama and Shelton State Community College students has won the NASA Lunabotics Mining Competition. The team, which designed and built a remote controlled lunar soil excavator called a lunabot, outsmarted more than 50 other teams from universities around the world during the week-long contest at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.
A team of University of Alabama and Shelton State Community College students has won the national NASA Lunabotics Mining Competition.
The team, which designed and built a remote-controlled lunar soil excavator called a lunabot, outsmarted more than 50 other teams from universities around the world during the weeklong contest at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Awards for the competition were announced Saturday.
“This is a very difficult competition to win because of the rules and the environment,” said Kenneth Ricks, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and the team’s faculty adviser. “Winning the overall prize justifies the quality of engineering education at UA and rewards the students for the hours and hours they put into this.”
This was the third year NASA has hosted the competition. Alabama placed sixth in 2010 and fourth in 2011.
Each year, the UA students take the knowledge they learned from the previous year’s competition to build a new robot. The objective of the competition is the same — to build robots that aim to excavate lunar-like soil, but the rules and regulations for the robots change each year, Ricks said. NASA uses the competition to generate real ideas about how to mine on the moon, as well as recruit new engineers into the field.
“NASA’s judges tweak things to stimulate design and to emphasize different aspects of the design,” Ricks said.
This year’s robots were judged based on weight, bandwidth required for communication, how effective they were at excavation and several presentation categories. The robots were placed in a pit of volcanic ash roughly 40 feet by 40 feet. Ricks said the ash, found in the Utah and Arizona deserts, is a close enough match to simulate lunar soil.
“The UA robot is solid in both its electronics and controls as well as its mechanical design,” he said. “This overall balance between electrical and mechanical aspects of the project is difficult to achieve for many teams.”
The team’s robot had 10 minutes to maneuver through the soil and had to navigate an obstacle course of simulated lunar rocks and craters on its way to a designated mining area. The bot then collected soil before returning through the obstacle course and depositing the solid in a bin.
The drivers of the bots were in a separate building from the pit, navigating via remote control by monitoring footage beamed from cameras on board the bot. The UA robot was semi-autonomous.
Adam Melton, a UA sophomore and team leader for UA, said it was the team’s hard work that Alabama won the overall award. There were 13 members on the team, including Ricks, their faculty adviser.
“There was extremely stiff competition,” Melton said. “But we had a really good team that was well-balanced. We did everything we needed to get it done.”
The team won $8,000 to use for next year’s competition. NASA will also pay for this year’s team and adviser to participate in one of the organization’s remote research and technology tests. They will also be invited to a launch at the space center as guests of NASA.
"The team is already gearing up to start designing the new robot in August for next year’s competition. The old models are put into retirement and used for school demonstrations across West Alabama, and for remote recreational therapy at Children’s Hospital in Birmingham," Ricks said.
Reach Lydia Seabol Avant at 205-722-0222 or lydia.seabolavant@tuscaloosanews.com