After two long, brain draining days filled with countless adjustments to the robot and the program controlling the robot; Team Mountaineers brought back the Win, $750,000, and bragging rights, to Morgantown WV, the home of West Virginia University. On September 5th ten students from West Virginia University 's Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources won the top prize of the NASA Centennial Challenge at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts. WVU’s NASA Centennial Challenge team beat out countless other Universities, businesses, and hobbyist to win the Challenge. They competed against some of the best in rout, beating Universities like MIT, and RPI, as well as fortune 500 companies like Microsoft.
The NASA Centennial …show more content…
Dr. Gu says “It is a fully autonomous robot, that is in line with a future mars sample return mission.” with a straight face as if that is no big deal. Just that statement alone explains the huge difference between robotics in high school and college. Fully autonomous means that there is no human contact at all, and the robot will drive and think on its own. In high school the autonomous robots run through a list of commands that will complete a specific task with a person doing the calculations, and writing the commands for the robot to do to complete the task. In other words the person is the brains behind the program to the robot and not the robot. WVU’s robot is the brain operating the robot, not a person. They created algorithms that take information from cameras and sensors on the robot, then the robot uses this information to make its own decisions of when, where, what, and how to complete the task. Dr. Gu explains that Cataglyphis “goes around the park, finds and picks up 10 samples of different types off the ground with different degrees of difficulty, then the robot has to return these samples to the base where it started all without pre-programmed points, it thinks on its
The NASA Centennial …show more content…
Dr. Gu says “It is a fully autonomous robot, that is in line with a future mars sample return mission.” with a straight face as if that is no big deal. Just that statement alone explains the huge difference between robotics in high school and college. Fully autonomous means that there is no human contact at all, and the robot will drive and think on its own. In high school the autonomous robots run through a list of commands that will complete a specific task with a person doing the calculations, and writing the commands for the robot to do to complete the task. In other words the person is the brains behind the program to the robot and not the robot. WVU’s robot is the brain operating the robot, not a person. They created algorithms that take information from cameras and sensors on the robot, then the robot uses this information to make its own decisions of when, where, what, and how to complete the task. Dr. Gu explains that Cataglyphis “goes around the park, finds and picks up 10 samples of different types off the ground with different degrees of difficulty, then the robot has to return these samples to the base where it started all without pre-programmed points, it thinks on its