Oakton students to compete in NASA Robotic Mining Competition

(May 12, 2016) Oakton students are aiming for Mars while keeping their feet firmly planted on the ground. The college is one of just 44 teams – and the only community college in the country – to participate in the 2016 NASA Robotic Mining Competition, scheduled May 16 - 20, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The contest requires undergraduate and graduate students from colleges and universities to design and build a remote controlled robot capable of navigating a simulated, chaotic Martian terrain and excavate volcanic rock fragments (regolith).

Members of Oakton’s team include: Lachlan Ainsley Chen of Skokie; Michael Victor Habisohn of Park Ridge; William Kann of Park Ridge; Karolina Kilmont of Des Plaines; Miguel Mendoza of Niles; Chris Moriano of Chicago; Pedro Morales of Park Ridge; Lynette Sugatan of Niles; Mohankumar Vegesna of Niles; Matthew Wasiewicz of Park Ridge; and Shawn Zachariah of Des Plaines. The squad comprises students enrolled in an engineering independent study course taught by Angelo Gero, an electronics and computer technology lecturer at Oakton, who serves as the group’s advisor.

The trip to the Kennedy Space Center is the culmination of more than nine months of hard work. While NASA imposed no spending cap, Oakton’s team created a robot thanks in part to a $15,000 grant from the Oakton Educational Foundation.

Oakton will be competing head-to-head against engineering powerhouses including Auburn University, Colorado School of Mines, Purdue University, University of Michigan, and Virginia Tech.

Designed to engage and retain students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), the NASA competition requires teams to consider a number of design and operation factors, including dust tolerance and projection, communications, vehicle mass, energy/power requirements, and autonomy.

NASA also has a practical interest in hosting a robotics competition. The space agency would like to establish a human presence on Mars, and mining would be important for that mission. “The technology concepts developed by the university teams for this competition conceivably could be used to robotically mine regolith resources and other off-world mission sites,” NASA says on its website. “NASA will directly benefit from the competition by encouraging the development of innovative robotic excavation concepts from universities which may result in clever ideas and solutions which could be applied to an actual excavation device and/or payload retrieval mission. Advances in Martian mining have the potential to significantly contribute to our nation’s space vision and NASA space exploration operations.”