Competition: NASA RMC

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During my freshman year of college at the University of Washington: Bothell I joined the TrickFire Robotics team. This team consisted of students from all disciplines from marketing to mechanical engineering. From this project I learned how to use tools such as a solder, drill press, and how to model using AutoDesk Inventor.

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This project was to design and build a mars mining robot. The competition was geared towards college and university students. Universities from around the world designed and built their own robots. The competition entails to mine as much BP1 from one side of a field full of ditches and rocks and bring it to the other side. There were different achievements that a team could make. The biggest challenge for the teams was to make the robot autonomous and navigate through the field on it's own without human interaction. This year we decided not to tackle that challenge because the team was so new to the competition. 

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On this project I was a design team member. My duties were to design and test the wheels. How I did this was I first had a design meeting with the other members and brainstorm design Ideas. From the most ridiculous to the most reasonable I had a list of seven different designs. From there I narrowed down the designs to the most practical two. From there I 3D modeled and tested on a prototype. 

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After testing we decided to do a basic design which worked well in the competition and made it so the robot could travel across the mars simulated material. 

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After designing and manifesting the wheels the team was set to put together all of the pieces of the robot. Over a 5 day period the robot was assembled and driven down to Cape Canaveral, Florida where the robotics competition was being held. 

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Our team had a blast competing and although the team didn't do well, we learned a lot and were all the more excited to return the next year and do better.