National Center for Simulation partners with the University of Central Florida to host students for NASA’s Lunabotics Qualification Challenge

By Cassidy Mills, Staff Writer

 

The National Center for Simulation (NCS), in collaboration with UCF and NASA, hosted students from across the United States for the University of Central Florida Lunabotics Qualification Challenge at the Exolith Lab, May 11-14.

 

The Lunabotics Challenge is a collegiate engineering competition that tasks teams with designing lunar robots for future space infrastructure needs and aims to advance engineering education through hands-on experience.

 

Neal Finkelstein, Ph.D., chief operating officer at NCS, said Lunabotics is a great connection between Central Florida and the Space Coast, and the competition serves as a recruiting ground for companies seeking engineering talent.

 

“If you’re a recruiter and looking for interns or graduates, there’s no excuse anymore,” Finkelstein said. “You can’t say our company just can’t find good talent, because they all just arrived in Central Florida for the week.”

 

The Lunabotics Challenge consisted of three different events: The Project Development Challenge, the University of Central Florida Lunabotics Qualification Challenge, and lastly the NASA’s Lunabotics On-Site Challenge.

 

At the Project Development Challenge, teams had to submit a STEM engagement report, a systems engineering paper, a proof of life video and a demonstration of robotic performance in simulated lunar conditions before advancing to the Qualification Challenge.

 

Teams at the Qualification Challenge operated their robots in UCF’s Exolith Lab on the new Regolith Bin, a large indoor testbed filled with simulated lunar soil. The regolith simulant mimics the properties of Moon dust, including its fine particulate nature and abrasive quality.

 

This lab is part of the Florida Space Institute, which is affiliated with UCF. Exolith aims to advance space exploration, science and education by providing access to high-fidelity regolith simulant at its facility for research purposes.

 

“You are not in Kansas anymore. Operating in lunar regolith is nothing like operating in sand,” said Dan Britt, Ph.D., Pegasus Professor and director for UCF’s Center for Lunar and Asteroid Surface Science. “We simulate lunar regolith conditions…lunar regolith mineralogy, particle size, particle shape because if you do not test as realistically as possible, you will fail spectacularly. As some of the teams did.”

 

The UCF Alumni Center served as the teams’ base of operations, similar to NASCAR pit crews, where they performed maintenance and adjustments before transporting their robots to the regolith bin for testing.

 

“The Exolith Lab is this big pit that has about 130 tons of regolith,” Finkelstein said. “Regolith is space sand, and it’s all physics-based. It’s designed to act like what you’d find on the Moon or Mars. It’s simulated space.”

 

NASA, the European Space Agency and many companies use the same regolith bin to evaluate and improve new equipment and technologies before launching them into space, according to UCF Today.

 

Finkelstein said that teams participating in the Lunabotics Challenge at UCF’s Exolith Lab must research the properties and behavior of the space sand beforehand, as it differs significantly from regular sand.

 

“This isn’t just about building rovers in regular sand. It’s not like someone can dig a pit or grab 50 pounds of beach sand and expect it to work the same. Space sand is completely different,” Finkelstein said. “The makeup, how it sticks and the amount of aluminum are all unique. You really have to understand the specific properties and behavior of space sand before you can design a rover that performs well in competitions.”

 

The judging criteria included robot performance in excavation, construction of berms and dust mitigation strategies. Several modeling and simulation companies were involved in post-event analysis, using technology to measure the structural density and accuracy of the berms.

 

The Qualification Challenge was primarily sponsored by Caterpillar, a manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines and industrial gas turbines.
“They (Caterpillar) are just looking for all this talent, these kids that come to these competitions. They want to hire these people,” Finkelstein said. “They hire a lot of the winning teams.”

 

The top 10 scoring teams from the Qualification Challenge were invited to the final phase at NASA Kennedy Space Center’s Artemis Arena on May 15-18. There, teams demonstrated their robots under conditions designed to simulate lunar operations, with NASA engineers observing the tests.

 

Finkelstein said NCS organizes competitions such as the Lunabotics Challenge to inspire and develop young talent in STEM fields by providing students with practical, hands-on experience that goes beyond traditional classroom learning.

 

“We currently have 60 students participating in our STEM camps, with 30 in our lab and 30 at UCF’s physics building. We run about 11 weeks of these camps each year,” Finkelstein said. “Our camps are free, and the Army and Navy give us a grant to pay every student.”

 

NCS partners with high schools to offer scholarships and run certification programs. Finkelstein said some students who have participated in the camps have become paid instructors and interns. By engaging students early, NCS works to support the development of professionals with skills relevant to modeling, simulation and technology innovation.