University of Minnesota Robotics

University of Minnesota Robotics would like to give a shoutout to our maroon sponsor Minnesota Space Grant Consortium! 🚀 NASA’s Minnesota Space Grant Consortium (MnSGC) is part of the NASA-funded National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program (Space Grant for short) established by Congress in 1988. Space Grant provides support for higher education students majoring in STEM fields, student teams participating in NASA-themed higher education projects (like Lunabotics!), research opportunities for faculty and students, and much more! To learn more about the MnSGC, go to https://lnkd.in/gzhHFbwu. Thank you to Space Grant for supporting our Lunabotics Team!

I've been incredibly lucky to lead the University of Minnesota RoboMaster team in their inaugural year as part of University of Minnesota Robotics! Our team has worked tirelessly on Design, Fabrication, Controls in C++, and Computer Vision. All of our hard work has paid off, landing us 10th place out of 24 teams, and 2nd out of all rookie teams competing in the RoboMaster North America competition. I am excited to see where our team heads as we expand to larger competitions in the coming years!

Last week, my teammates at University of Minnesota Robotics and I had the opportunity to go to Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the 2024 Lunabotics competition. Though we might not be taking the prize home this time around, we’ve come a long way since not scoring last year, and I’m really proud of our progress. We also had the opportunity to watch not one, but two SpaceX Starlink launches up close, which was an absolutely indescribable experience. All in all, it was a pleasure to go on this trip with a group of people who are not only brilliant engineers with unique personalities, but also great friends. A big thank you to NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the University of Central Florida for hosting this year’s competition! Don’t forget us, we’ll be shooting for the stars next year.

I am extremely proud of the countless hours my teammates and I under University of Minnesota Robotics have put into making this robot the best it can be. We leave for Florida tomorrow to compete in the NASA Lunabotics competition at the University of Central Florida from 5/11-5/14 and at NASA Kennedy Space Center from 5/15-5/17. This annual robotics competition hosted by NASA takes place in a lunar simulator filled with lunar regolith simulant. Earth-dependent sensors such as GPS being banned presents unique challenges, requiring robots to utilize sophisticated techniques like SLAM for localization. We have spent this academic year overhauling our software architecture and mechanical design, and I am excited to see our work pay off!

UMN Robotics is excited to debut our newest competition group RoboMaster and will be competing at the RMUL North America Competition at the University of Colorado Boulder on June 15th - 18th. The #RoboMasterCompetition is an annual international robotics competition created by DJI, the world’s leader in civilian drones and aerial imaging technology. It's not just a contest; it's a battlefield where multidisciplinary skills, teamwork, and creativity come together. The competition is designed to challenge teams in both engineering and strategy, requiring participants to design, build, and program a fleet of robots to compete in a complex, battle-like arena. We finally got to finish the robot base and CV and are ready to start working on robot controls!

UMN Robotics is so excited to be competing at the NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration Lunabotics Competition this coming May! The #NASALunaboticsChallenge, previously known as the NASA Robotic Mining Competition, is an annual competition hosted by NASA at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Teams build robots that mine in a simulated Lunar environment, where the floor of the arena consists of gravel covered by a layer of packed dust. The robots must cross a section of the arena covered with obstacles, dig for the gravel while sifting out the dust, and return back to deposit the gravel in a collection trough. Teams are scored based on the amount of material they collect during their 10-minute run, as well as other factors such as dust protection, power usage, weight, and level of autonomy. The Lunar simulation brings unique challenges, including the drive team being isolated from the arena and Earth-dependent sensors like GPS being banned. Here is a sneak peek of our robot in the form of a simulation run.

🤖 Thrilled to Support University of Minnesota Robotics 🚀 Exciting news! Bittele Electronics is proud to announce our recent monetary donation to the University of Minnesota Robotics Team. As advocates for STEM education, we’re committed to empowering the next generation of innovators. Together, we’re building a brighter future! 🌟 #STEMeducation #Robotics #Innovation #universityofminnesota

Robot in 3 Days (Ri3D) starts in three days! Every year, a few teams of college students and FIRST robotics alumni build robots for the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC). Unlike the high school students who compete in FRC, we design, build and decorate our robots in 3 days instead of 6 weeks. Our mission in completing the Ri3D challenge is to not only build a functional, (mostly) FRC-legal robot, but to share as much of our team’s collective knowledge with the FIRST community as possible. UMN Robotics is also grateful for the AndyMark Inc. sponsorship, giving us the opportunity to support FIRST Teams globally for the 2024 FIRST Robotics Competition Crescendo! Be sure to keep an eye on our other social media platforms (Instagram, YouTube) as well as here for day-to-day updates.