[meteorite-list] NASA Awards $100, 000 to Winning Team of Robot Challenge

[Ron Baalke]

June 13, 2015

RELEASE 15-125

NASA Awards $100,000 to Winning Team of Robot Challenge

NASA has awarded $100,000 in prize money to the Mountaineers, a team from 
West Virginia University, Morgantown, for successfully completing Level 2 of 
the Sample Return Robot Challenge, part of the agency's Centennial Challenges 
prize program.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) hosted the event June 10-12 at its 
Worcester, Massachusetts, campus. This was the fourth year NASA and WPI held 
the Sample Robot Return competition.

Dennis Andrucyk, deputy associate administrator for the Space Technology 
Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, and NASA astronaut 
Cady Coleman presented awards to the Mountaineers team members Saturday at 
the opening of TouchTomorrow, a science and robotics technology festival. The 
festival, which was open to the public, highlighted the teams and robots, as 
well as NASA and WPI exhibits in science, robotics and space technology.

"It was wonderful to see the teams compete and demonstrate their expertise 
with autonomous robotic systems," said Andrucyk. "NASA uses competitions like 
these to help maintain and advance America's leadership in technology and 
innovation. As we've seen this week, pushing the state-of-the-art in robotics 
will ultimately increase the effectiveness and safety of humans in space and 
will enable cutting-edge scientific exploration of the solar system."

The objective of the challenge is to encourage innovations in autonomous 
navigation and robotics technologies. Teams were required to demonstrate 
their robots could locate and collect geologic samples from wide and varied 
terrains, operating without human control.

The challenge includes two levels of competition. For a robot to complete 
Level 1 successfully, it must depart a starting platform in search of a 
sample, the specifications of which were previously programmed into the 
robot's onboard computer. Operating autonomously, the robot has 30 minutes to 
locate, capture and return to its starting platform with one undamaged 
sample. Teams that complete Level 1 may move on to Level 2.

For Level 2, robots have two hours to return autonomously at least two 
undamaged samples, including a sample known previously to the team and one 
introduced the day of the competition. Samples collected in Level 2 are 
categorized as easy, intermediate and hard based on the complexity of their 
shape, size and design. More points are awarded for those classified as hard. 
In this year's competition, samples ranged in shape and size from 
rectangular to round.

The Centennial Challenges program is part of NASA's Space Technology Mission 
Directorate, which is innovating, developing, testing and flying hardware for 
use in NASA's future missions. For more information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/challenges

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