Students Win NASA Moon Robot Competition

Mikkeles writes "After a grueling five-day test of material-collecting ability, the team from Laurentian University returned home to Sudbury, Canada with the win in NASA's second annual Lunabotics competition. Second place went to North Dakota, and West Virginia University placed third."

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[Usually Unlucky]

NASA spent very little money on this. Most teams were funded by their university and local space grants which almost every state has. The only real expense to NASA was in setting up the final test and the judging.

I graduated from WVU (THIRD PLACE, congratulations guys!) last year so I couldn't participate in this event, but I have participated in similar ones in years past, more elaborate ones even. Trust me they are worth the cost to the tax payer.

It wasn't until praticipating in one of these competitions

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[eviljolly]

Regardless of how this applies to NASA's missions, fueling this type of creativity today will bring better innovation tomorrow.

Sudbury's Just Like The Moon... Not

[FrankDrebin]

During the Apollo manned lunar exploration program, NASA astronauts trained in Sudbury ... visiting Sudbury because it purportedly resembled the lifeless surface of the moon... [wikipedia.org]

Re:Sudbury's Just Like The Moon... Not

[The Yuckinator]

What's the point of posting if you're going to post a deliberately misleading link? Here's the full paragraph from Wikipedia without your omission:

During the Apollo manned lunar exploration program, NASA astronauts trained in Sudbury to become familiar with shatter cones, a rare rock formation connected with meteorite impacts. However, the popular misconception that they were visiting Sudbury because it purportedly resembled the lifeless surface of the moon dogged the city for years—as recently as 2009, a CBC Radio journalist repeated the moonscape myth in a report aired on The Current,[21] although the show subsequently corrected the error by interviewing NASA astronaut Fred Haise, who confirmed that he had been in Sudbury to study rock formations.[22]

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[Bacon Bits]

Maybe he's trying to get a job at Fox News?

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[CanadianRealist]

Interesting to hear that astronauts trained in Sudbury, I didn't know that.

The first thing that I though when I read the summary is that there's a lot of mining that goes on around Sudbury, so maybe they know a bit about what's involved in collecting rock and/or soil samples.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Typical journalism confusion. It's not the surface terrain that's "like the moon", it's the underlying geology in the bedrock -- i.e. Sudbury is located within a large, deeply eroded impact crater [wikipedia.org]. It's the second largest known on Earth, and thus a logical place to send astronauts to study the geology.

Canadians and Space

[farrellj]

Yeah Canada!

I mean, we built the legs for the Lunar Module, and that lead to us designing and building the robotic arms used on the Shuttle and the ISS. And many of the top people in the Gemini, and Apollo program were Canadians, hired by NASA after the AVRO Arrow CF-105 was cancelled in the late 1950s.

ttyl
          Farrell

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[Ironhandx]

I cringe every time I see the AVRO Arrow mentioned. Particularly lately with the Harper governments full intention of bending over for the American government.

Canada could be a world leader in aircraft development right now, both militarily and passenger plane wise. An entire starting industry killed off by one phone call from an American.

Since then we still somehow have a pretty decent group of aerospace development talent but lack a driving force for development. The one that we would have had that would

NASA needs bunny girls

[The Archon V2.0]

I swear I read that as "NASA Moon Rabbit Competition" first time. Gotta swear off Imperishable Night [touhouwiki.net] for a while....

Imagine that...

[jittles]

Imagine that! Students win a competition for... students. Enlightening title on both /. and NASA

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[whoop]

Not only that, students took several of the top places! Take that all you other people!

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[daniel_i_l]

I think that that this was the newsworthy part: "returned home to Sudbury, Canada"

What's with the picture?

[theshowmecanuck]

They talk about a winning team and then post a picture of some other team's entry. WTF? I'm curious as to what the winning entry looked like.

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[guppysap13]

I participated in this competition, and my team probably has a photo of Laurentian's robot somewhere. In the meantime, this link [world-countries.net] has a picture of the robot. It's difficult to find a larger image anywhere online.

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[camperdave]

They talk about a winning team and then post a picture of some other team's entry. WTF? I'm curious as to what the winning entry looked like.

Here you go! [google.com]

It is awfully bizarre that the only picture they show is not the winning entry.

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[Have Brain Will Rent]

Some possible explanation might be inferred from the fact that they spent more time talking about and with the losing US teams than about and with the winning team from another country.

'Bot or not?

[wrencherd]

From the Canada Press story linked above: [google.com]

During the competition, the teams remotely controlled excavators — called "Lunabots" — to determine which could collect the most simulated lunar soil over 15 minutes.

So, were they robots or not?

TO(-riginal)FA doesn't seem to give any details concerning autonomous behavior either.

If they were autonomous, what environmental interaction(-s) did they engage in?