Wednesday, June 1, 2011

WPI robotics team wins first place in NASA rover competition

By Michelle Lang

Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) returned from the NASA-sponsored Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts Academic Linkage Exploration Robo-Ops Competition with a first-place win – its second win of a NASA competition in as many years – for its 13-member student robotics engineering team, named Team Oryx.

The team competed in the elite contest against six other teams at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. As the winners, the students took home a $5,000 prize and a stipend to attend the Desert RATS analog testing event, where NASA will have a team working on technology research in Arizona’s desert environment. The team also won first-place category awards for “presentation” and “high energy.”

The competition required that each team build a robotic rover to tackle a number of tasks and challenges, including navigating a rock yard and collecting up to 30 different rocks. The goal was to complete the tasks in the quickest time, while also performing them via a controller used at the respective team’s campus. WPI’s team grabbed five rocks, including a bonus rock worth extra points, in 53 minutes, garnering 32 points total – 29 points ahead of the second-place team.

Team Oryx is made up of:  Jon Anderson ‘12, Tom Carlone ‘12, Ennio Claretti ‘13, Catherine Coleman ‘12, Andrew Cunningham ‘13, Eric Fitting ‘12, Frederick Hunter ‘13, Gregory McConnell ‘12, Tyler Pietri ‘14, Raymond Short ‘12, Michael Fagan ‘12, and Corey Stevens ‘12. Graduate students include Dan Sacco (BS ‘10, MS ‘11) and Ben Roy (BS ‘10, MS ‘11).

In October 2009, a WPI team won the $500,000 grand prize from the NASA-sponsored Regolith (moondust) Excavation Challenge.