NASA Awards $100,000 To Winning Robot Challenge Team
NASA has awarded $100,000 in prize money to the Mountaineers, a team from West Virginia University, Morgantown, for successfully completing Level 2 of the Sample Return Robot Challenge, part of the agency's Centennial Challenges prize program.
Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) hosted the event June 10-12 at its Worcester, Massachusetts, campus. This was the fourth year NASA and WPI held the Sample Robot Return competition.
Dennis Andrucyk, deputy associate administrator for the Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, and NASA astronaut Cady Coleman presented awards to the Mountaineers team members Saturday at the opening of TouchTomorrow, a science and robotics technology festival. The festival, which was open to the public, highlighted the teams and robots, as well as NASA and WPI exhibits in science, robotics and space technology.
"It was wonderful to see the teams compete and demonstrate their expertise with autonomous robotic systems," said Andrucyk. "NASA uses competitions like these to help maintain and advance America's leadership in technology and innovation. As we've seen this week, pushing the state-of-the-art in robotics will ultimately increase the effectiveness and safety of humans in space and will enable cutting-edge scientific exploration of the solar system."
The objective of the challenge is to encourage innovations in autonomous navigation and robotics technologies. Teams were required to demonstrate their robots could locate and collect geologic samples from wide and varied terrains, operating without human control.
The challenge includes two levels of competition. For a robot to complete Level 1 successfully, it must depart a starting platform in search of a sample, the specifications of which were previously programmed into the robot's onboard computer. Operating autonomously, the robot has 30 minutes to locate, capture and return to its starting platform with one undamaged sample. Teams that complete Level 1 may move on to Level 2.
For Level 2, robots have two hours to return autonomously at least two undamaged samples, including a sample known previously to the team and one introduced the day of the competition. Samples collected in Level 2 are categorized as easy, intermediate and hard based on the complexity of their shape, size and design. More points are awarded for those classified as hard. In this years competition, samples ranged in shape and size from rectangular to round.
The Centennial Challenges program is part of NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, which is innovating, developing, testing and flying hardware for use in NASA's future missions. For more information, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/challenges
http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-awards-100000-to-winning-team-of-robot-challenge
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Great young minds at work.
It would this type technology will have varied uses in varied fields, where sample collection is dangerous for direction human participation.
And I am sure it will be applied in the space exploration efforts as well.
Great job by the Mountaineers!
It doesn't get any better than this. You face a challenge, analyze it, design and build, then put it to the test. This is where real learning for these kids takes place.
They need to have similar age appropriate challenges like this all through the K-12 levels in school. This is the sort of thing that drives math and the sciences.
Great stuff Robert!
We have a local Vo-Ed high school and the robotics team finished 8th nationally recently.
They were over the moon with all the attention, but I think they were more happy that they got to meet other kids doing similar things and to see other projects
They are also doing demonstrations of their projects for the younger children in schools around the county
Reviving the interest in STEM is vita to the children in school today and in the future
Thanks for the feedback
Robbie would be so proud...
Buzz
I don't get it, slow today I guess
Robbie who?
Robbie the Robot of course.....
Well of course, like I said a little slow today!
You can always expect classic movie references from me. I'm a great believer that life imitates art.
I agree with that and also that sometimes the vision of storytellers of yore accurately predicts the future reality.
We have seen this many times
For starters - the visions of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, followed by a great number of Sci-Fi authors.
"Number Five is alive!"
Isaac Asimov come to mind
R W
Glad you liked it thanks for the feedback
Another great movie
My kids loved this movie when they were younger
R W
Your pictures are better than mine
Don't forget my first love, Robert Heinlein. Golden age for Sci-Fi, the 50's & 60's, what with Asimov, Heinlein and Clark churning out the good stuff.
A few of the"future" observationsof things to come, offered up byHeinlein over the years.
Heinlein was also a great story teller who saw the future in much of what he wrote.
R W
ET is an all time favorite in our house across four generations and it is often pulled out when multiple levels of the family are present and cannot agree on what to watch.
T G D
"Lost in Space"
A great show and in many ways an apt commentary on the society we live in of late.