Five students from the Roy G. Perry College of Engineering have been selected to participate in NASA’s Second Annual Lunabotics Mining Competition at the Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida from May 23-28.
Senior mechanical engineering majors William Sapon, Roscoe Mickens, Ivette Rangel, Kamau Tilmutt, and Mahir Patel will represent Prairie View A&M University as fifth generation participants in the competition that was renamed in 2010. With 51 schools participating from all over the world, 31 more than last year’s competition, they are faced with the challenge of designing and building a remote-controlled excavator, called a lunabot, that can collect and deposit a minimum of 10 kilograms of lunar stimulant within 15 minutes. The program was designed to engage students in STEM, and NASA could potentially use any innovations generated for new solutions implemented in their activities.
The opportunity came to the students last August when they began taking senior design, a class required for all engineering students before graduation. According to the students, the demand for the class in the fall semester rose, as twice as many students applied. Once admitted, the students were chosen based on their work ethic and academic achievements by a group of professors. Sapon, who serves as team leader on the project, referred to his colleagues and himself as the “dream team of engineers” from the department.
Once the team was assembled, they spent the entire first semester doing research, under lead researcher Patel. This required extensive planning, written reports, and a preliminary and final design. NASA and Prairie View funded all research and materials, as NASA donated $6,000, which was matched dollar for dollar by the university. After doing the research, it was time to put it into effect, as the team spent an average of 20 hours a week assembling, testing, and optimizing the design for the lunabot they dubbed “Gravedigger.”
Rangel, who serves as lead administrator on the project, said, “Our biggest challenge was getting the parts. We had a list of parts assembled, but we had to go to different processes to get them. We had to make trips to the hardware store, get the parts, the receipts, and bring them back to school for the records.”
The lunabot was custom-made. All parts were assembled from scratch with the exception of the motor. Mickens, who serves as lead manufacturer had to utilize the resources afforded to the team to generate new ideas for the design. The challenge is made even more difficult, as the lunabot must be controlled using wireless Internet or WiFi. This was a task that Tilmutt had to complete as communications lead on the project.
Sapon said, “It was a big responsibility trying to hold this team together. We didn’t know each other as well as we do now, so we had to get on the same page first. There are normally only three students on a team; with us having five students, it was an even bigger challenge making sure everybody was doing their work. We did a pretty good job at keeping things balanced.”
Other universities competing in this year’s competition include Auburn, Marquette, New Mexico State, Harvard, Portland State, Montana State, and Virginia Tech. Representing the international front will bez BRAC University from Bangladesh, Laurentian University from Canada, Amity University from India, and Universidad de Los Andes from Colombia, South America.