COD students compete in NASA robotic mining competition
GLEN ELLYN - For the second year in a row, College of DuPage was one of two community colleges invited to participate in the 2016 NASA Robotic Mining Competition held at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Members of the Engineering Club who participated in the recent NASA competition in Florida included Christopher Childs-Moore, Lisle; Maxwel Cichon, Bloomingdale; Nathan Hinz, Westmont; Jenny Kaeppel, Naperville; Nemanja Kuzmanovic, Darien; Katharine Lewis, Wheaton; Alexis Miranda, Bloomingdale; David Samuels, Winfield; Jacob Smith, Lombard; Alec
Steinkraus, Plainfield; and Nicholas Stewart, Bloomingdale.
This year's NASA Robotic Mining Competition included competitors from more than 40 schools across the country.
Featuring a variety of challenges, including the abrasive characteristics of the basaltic regolith simulant, the weight and size limitations of the mining robot, and the ability to tele-operate it from a remote Mission Control Center, scoring during the competition included a number of factors such as autonomy, communications, dust tolerance and projection, power requirements, and vehicle mass. In addition, teams were required to submit an in-depth systems engineering report and a written description of engineering-related outreach undertaken by students.
"Faculty adviser HVACR Assistant Professor Bob Clark and I are extremely proud of these students who have worked hard and invested many hours of their free time in this project," said Engineering Club adviser and Assistant Engineering Professor Scott Banjavcic. "The team competed very well in the competition and vastly improved upon performance at past
robotic competitions. They also learned many new lessons to carry into future competitions."
According to team member Nemanja Kuzmanovic, the team's journey - from the initial design brainstorming sessions through the build process and to the competition - was an invaluable learning experience. He said the process revealed to him why teamwork is so important in engineering.
"Engineering is a team sport and a project cannot be completed by one person alone," he said. "During the design process, we were able to build off each other's ideas and experience to come up with the best way of achieving our goals. The build process taught me the importance of communication between engineers and machinists. If a drawing was not
properly dimensioned and labeled, it made manufacturing very difficult and often times impossible."
Kuzmanovic, who has just completed COD's Engineering Pathways program and will be transferring to the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in the fall, said the most valuable lessons were gained during the competition at the Kennedy Space Center.