ASEE Southeast Section Conference 1 Learning Robotics through Participation in National Design Contests

Every two years students from many academic institutions gather in Albuquerque, New Mexico to participate in a NASA sponsored robotics contest. This contest that is held in conjunction with the Space and Robotics Conference, challenges students to apply their engineering and technology skills towards solution of space based technical problems. This year, a team from the Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) participated in this contest. The students in this team designed and built two robots to accomplish the task. One robot called the Locator was designed to locate the buried lava tube (a box) by poking the sand with 16 pins with independent suspensions. Once located, the Locator robot marks the area for the second robot to approach the area, drill through the sand and the buried box, and install an airlock. The robots were remotely manipulated by the students from another room using cameras mounted on the robots to simulate control of such vehicles on the moon from the earth. Students accomplished many of the required tasks successfully due to the methodical utilization of their design and project management skills