Hoover resident part of UA “astrobotics” team that won NASA competition

Samuel Griffin of Hoover is part of The University of Alabama robotics team that won first prize in a NASA contest.

Alabama Astrobotics took the top prize at the NASA Robotic Mining Competition, besting student teams from more than 50 other institutions in the challenge to build a robot capable of navigating and excavating simulated Martian soil, or regolith. The team has won the top honor four years in a row.

Made up of about 65 students from across eight disciplines, including engineering and computer science, Alabama Astrobotics is the only team to win more than once in the nine-year history of the NASA contest, placing first in 2012 and 2015-2018.

Contest organizers revised the rules and rubrics this year to reflect the discovery that water ice is prevalent throughout the Red Planet. The challenge is to mine the icy regolith, simulated with gravel in the contest, since water ice will provide oxygen, water and fuel for off-world colonies.

What that meant for the contest, though, is no points were awarded to teams for digging the top foot of regolith. Teams earned points for collecting the gravel 12 inches below the surface. The robot built by the UA students mined the most gravel of any team in the contest.

Also, Alabama Astrobotics was the only team with a robot that competed entirely autonomously, meaning the robot used computer programming to guide itself, mine and deposit the soil and gravel without any direction from students during the contest.

The team placed first in five out of nine categories that included mining, autonomy, systems engineering paper, efficient use of communications power and outreach reports. In all, the students won $11,000 for use on next year's robot.

The team received funding from the Alabama Space Grant Consortium, NASA, Dynetics, Fitz-Thors Engineering, Crank N Chrome and the university.

Submitted by University of Alabama.