York College students earn fi rst-ever NASA robotics prize
BY CARLOTTA MOHAMED
Though they didn’t
advance to the qualifying
round in the NASA Robotic
Mining Competition, the
York College Astrobotics
Program in Jamaica brought
home their first-ever trophy
for the “smallest and most
efficient bot.”
Members of the York
College Astrobotic Research
and Design Program traveled
to the University of Alabama
in Tuscaloosa for the Robotic
Mining Challenge held May
6-10. Twenty-eight teams
accepted the invitation to
travel to UA from North
Dakota, Alaska, California,
New York and around
the country.
For the past nine years, the
competition has taken place at
NASA’s Kennedy Space Center
in Florida, but was moved
to Alabama due to lost prep
time during the government
shutdown earlier this year.
The college students
descended on Tuscaloosa to
demonstrate how a robot they
built over the past year can
autonomously navigate and
excavate simulated Martian
soil, or regolith.
York senior, Zachary
Sanichar, 21, team leader of the
York Astrobotic Engineering
Team, said it’s a first in five
years of the program that they
decided to iterate on a previous
bot, which was driven to
Tuscaloosa since it couldn’t be
transported by plane.
“We actually recycled this
bot and every year we design
the bot basically taking a
different approach,” said
Sanichar. “It’s a backhoe tankdriven
style bot. It uses tank
steer such as the left side will
go forward and the right side
will turn to go backwards,
and the back-hoe is similar
to the caterpillar excavators
where they use that same
kind of bucket and wrist
actuator. We used lead acid
batteries to power the robot
and several different methods
of controllers.”
This year, the team
developed their robot from
recyclable materials, working
with what they had in their
budgetary restraint spending
less than a $100 iterating
the robot.
The York College team is one of 30 that qualified for the
competition with its robot. Photo courtesy of Daniel Phelps
The bot — 20 inches long,
26 inches wide, and 75 inches
tall — had several practice
runs this year, said Sanichar.
“In our first run, we were
unsuccessful. In our second
run, we had an issue where
our robot got stuck on the
rock and it was very hard to
turn,” said Sanichar. “So far
only this year four schools out
of 30 were able to qualify and
not many schools succeed at it.
As a non-engineering school,
I think we did very well. At
the end of it our efforts proved
fruitful winning an award for
the smallest and most efficient
bot in the competition.”
Sanichar added, “I feel
very great and empowered by
the experience and its helped
me grow a lot of as person in
general. With my team it was
an amazing experience. As the
only member that participated
in previous robotic or
engineering programs, I
taught them exactly what I
know and how they can apply
it, and learning from them as
well. Overall, this competition
is something that you can’t
receive out of a classroom.”
Program Director
Daniel Phelps launched the
Astrobotics program at York
College five years ago with
students from computer
science, information
systems technology, and the
communications technology
department to create a team
going up against the largest
engineering schools across
the country.
So far, forty students have
come through the program
working on anything from
swarm robotics through the
Swarmathon Competition
entry or the Robotic Mining
Competition entry, according
to Phelps.
“We’ve had great success
with students that are able to
complete the program over
two or three years,” said
Phelps. “Being able to retain
students and have them travel
to the competition location is
very important…normally
we don’t have a lot of support
for student travel. We’ll have
12 people on the team but
only eight students are able
to come.”
Read more at QNS.com.
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