Lunabotics Success at NASA Robotics Mining Competition

Eight students and two faculty members from the Lee College of Engineering’s 49er Miners Team travelled to Kennedy Space Center in May for a week long battle with 35 other colleges in the fifth annual NASA Robotics Mining Competition. As part of the Senior Design Lunabotics Project, students design and build a mining robot that can traverse the simulated Martian chaotic terrain, excavate Martian regolith and deposit the regolith into a Collector Bin within 10 minutes.

NASA describes the complexities of the challenge to include the abrasive characteristics of the basaltic regolith simulant, the weight and size of the limitations of the mining robot, and the ability to control it from a remote center. The scoring for the mining category required teams to consider a number of design and operation factors such as dust tolerance and protection, communications, vehicle mass, energy/power, and autonomy.

The 49er Miners set a school record in all three categories in which they competed! They finished in 3rd place in the Presentation and Demonstration competition, 7th place for total regolith mined, and 8th place for overall points earned.

Earlier in the year, the team also took 1st place in the Junior/Senior Design Team Division of the Student Poster Competition at The American Society of Engineering Education, SE Section, at Mercer University in Macon, GA.

Mentored by Dr. Aidan Browne and Dr. Wesley Williams, the team is looking forward to even better performance at the 2015 event. Following NASA’s lead, the project is dropping the Lunabotics name; it will be called Astrobotics moving forward. This year the project was sponsored by the North Carolina Space Grant, UNCC, American Concrete Institute: Carolinas Chapter, Adams: an Oldcastle Company, Aguiar Law Office, PLLC, Joseph Rand, MD, PA, Sato DCS and Labelling, Micro.waterjet, Daetwyler Industries, The SEFA Group, A&E Water Conditioning and Taxes & More.