Lunabotics
Lunabotics
The NASA Lunabotics team works to help NASA with its mission to explore Mars and the Moon. Each year the team competes in the NASA Lunabotics Mining Competition (Moon) or Robotic Mining Competition (Mars) at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The goal is to build a robot that can traverse a simulated Martian or Lunar terrain in order to collect materials. NASA uses this competition to fuel ideas for its own future missions.
Projects
Projects
Competition overview
The annual NASA Robotic Mining Competition arena has three zones: starting, obstacle, and mining. The robots must start in the starting zone, cross the obstacle zone where there are craters and large rocks, collect material in the mining zone, and return the material to the starting zone to deposit in a collection bin. Each team is given two competition runs of ten minutes each to try to collect as much material as possible. There are mass, size, and material constraints teams must adhere to in order to compete. Points and awards are given to teams based on mining, autonomy, efficiency, dust control, innovation, systems papers, slide presentations, and outreach. NASA uses BP-1, a crushed basaltic aggregate, to simulate the Martian surface and beneath that is a layer of gravel to simulate the icy regolith on Mars. Each year NASA changes the rules slightly to emphasize certain aspects of the competition. Most recently they made the BP-1 worth zero points in the mining category to encourage teams to dig down to the gravel.
For the upcoming 2024 competition, the challenge has been changed from mining to berm building. Instead of mining rocks, the new robot will need to collect as much simulated regolith as possible to build the largest berm in the designated building area of the arena.
CAD Model
2022-23 COMPETITION
The Lunabotics team preformed well at the 2023 RMC competition hosted by Alabama State University by placing 4th out of 30 teams, receiving the Leaps and Bounds Award for most improved team, placing 1st for the Public Outreach Award, receiving a perfect score for the Project Management Plan, and earning the Pheonix Award.
The robot featured an auger excavation system that scooped rock into the hopper. Once the tank track drive train carried the robot over the simulated lunar terrain, the hopper would deposit its material into the collection bin.
MEMBERS
We are a team of people with a passion for innovation and aerospace robotics. The team is open to people in any major or discipline and with any level of experience. Members of this team participate in research, brainstorming, designing, 3D modeling, programming, and manufacturing of the robot. As such, this team is a great way to gain hands on experience outside of the classroom. The competition is also a great way to make connections with NASA members and we have had multiple team members land internships with NASA in the past.
2023-24 team leads
Head Lead: Emma Soukup
Head Lead Apprentice: Nicholas Witulski
Drive Train Lead: Jacob Zitek
Hopper Lead: Karson Swartzbaugh
Electronics Leads: Zander Ziettlow
Software Lead: Angeline Luther
Excavation Lead: CJ McCoy
Systems Engineering Lead: Maverick Naughtin
Outreach Lead: Felicity Sierra