NASA Regolith Excavator
A team of Lee College of Engineering Senior Design students recently competed in NASA’s First Lunabotics Mining Competition held at the Kennedy Space Center on May 24–28. Teams were tasked with designing and building a robotic excavator that was capable of excavating and depositing at least 10 kg of material in a 15-minute timeframe.
UNC Charlotte’s team consisted of six students representing the following programs:
- Blake Phillips, EET
- Dustin Montgomery, EET
- Hiep Le, EET
- Justin Engle, MET
- Byron Graves, MEES
- Walter Rumble, CM/CIET
A total of 22 teams from around the country participated in the event and UNC Charlotte’s team placed in the top half of the competition. The team’s project and participation was funded by a $5,000 grant from the NASA Exploration System Mission Directorate (ESMD) Higher Education Project in partnership with the National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program with some supplemental funds from the COE Senior Design Program.
Faculty mentors for the project included Dr. Bruce Gehrig, Dr. John Hildreth, Dr. Peter Schmidt, and Dr. Maciej Noras. Additional information can be found at www.robotics.nasa.gov.