Astronomy:NASA Robotic Mining Competition

NASA Robotic Mining Competition (NASA RMC) is a competition established in 2010 for university students to build a mining robot that is designed to navigate on the Martian surface. One team per school is allowed to compete and around 50 schools compete each year. The teams should compose of at least 2 undergraduate students and graduate students who are enrolled in the current school year. The teams also need to include a current faculty member or advisor. There is no limit to the number of members but NASA advises the teams to have a sufficient and manageable size. While the competition is focused on graduate and undergraduate students from four year institutions, invitations are also extended to teams from community colleges. The latest (ninth annual) competition, in May 2018, resulted in the team from the University of Alabama, Alabama Astrobotics, winning for the fourth consecutive year.

RMC Award categories

The NASA Robotics Mining Competition website provides the following descriptions of the award categories:

• Efficient Use of Communications Power Award: Awarded to the team for using the lowest average data utilization bandwidth per regolith points earned in both the timed and NASA monitored portion of the competition. Teams MUST collect the minimum amount of regolith to qualify for this award.
• Regolith Mechanics Award: Awarded to the team with the best example of a real granular innovation that identified a specific regolith mechanics problem (like the way the soil flows around the grousers, or angle of repose too high in their dump bucket, etc.) and intentionally improved their design to deal with it. Courtesy of the Center for Lunar and Asteroid Surface Science (CLASS), part of NASA’s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) Network.
• Caterpillar Autonomy Award: Awarded to the teams with the first, second and third most autonomous points averaged from both mining attempts, even if no regolith is deposited. In the event of a tie, the team that deposits the most regolith will win. If no regolith is deposited, the Mining Judges will choose the winner.
• Judge’s Innovation Award: Awarded to the team that demonstrates the most innovative design.
• Social Media and Public Engagement: Awarded to the teams that uses various social media platforms to engage the public in their participation with MC (mining competition) and engages with NASA and other robotic teams.
• Slide Presentation and Demonstration: Awarded to the team that best presents their project at the competition in front of an audience including NASA and private industry judges.
• Outreach Project Report: Awarded to the teams with the best educational outreach project in their local community to engage students in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). Outreach activities should capitalize on the excitement of NASA’s discoveries to spark student (K-12) interest and involvement in STEM.
• Systems Engineering Paper: Awarded to the team that best discusses the Systems Engineering methods used to design and build their mining robot. The paper is peer reviewed by support and operations personnel from across the Administration.
• Robotic On-Site Mining: Awarded to the team that passes robot and communication inspections, mines more than 10 kg of regolith, most efficient use in bandwidth, minimizes robot mass, reports energy consumed, has a dust tolerant design & performs dust free operations, performs tele-robotic and / or autonomously and mines the most resources.
• Joe Kosmo Award for Excellence: Awarded to the team that scores the most points in both the mandatory and optional competition events.