The Montana MULE: A Case Study in Interdisciplinary Capstone Design

In May of 2010, NASA held the 1 st annual Lunabotics Mining Competition at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In this competition, 22 teams from across the nation built remotecontrolled, robotic excavators to mine lunar regolith simulant. The winner of the competition was the team who could successfully deposit the most regolith into a collector in 15 minutes. The goal of this competition was to encourage multidisciplinary capstone design projects. Of the 22 teams that participated in the competition, the “Montana MULE” from Montana State University (MSU) was the only robot to successfully mine the qualifying weight of 10kg and ultimately deposited 22.6kg to take first place at the competition. The interdisciplinary capstone team that was assembled at MSU consisted of 8 students and 5 faculty advisors from 4 different departments and represented the largest multidisciplinary project ever attempted in the College of Engineering. This paper will present an overview of the multidisciplinary capstone project and detail the challenges of administering such a large capstone team. These include coordination of schedules, deliverables, and student supervision. The assessment strategy will also be presented and the challenges will be discussed. Recommendations and lessons-learned will also be presented in order to assist faculty at other institutions in implementing similar multidisciplinary projects. 1. Competition Rules NASA initiated this competition in order to stress the fundamentals of systems engineering and to expose students to working in interdisciplinary teams. The rules of the competition were posted approximately 10 months before the May 2010 competition date. The competition field consisted of a 7.38m x 7.76m box that was filled with regolith simulant and divided into two 7.38m x 3.88m regions for simultaneous mining by two teams. At one end of each field, there was a collector box that was connected to a scale to weigh the amount of regolith deposited during the competition. The top of the collector was located 1m above the surface of the regolith. The fields were divided into an obstacle area and a mining area. At the beginning of the competition, the robot was placed near the collector box and had to move through the obstacle area while avoiding craters and boulders to get to the mining area. Once in the mining area, the robot was allowed to collect as much regolith as desired. The robot had to carry the regolith back through the obstacle area and deposit into the collector. Each robot was given 15 minutes to compete and could make as many trips to the mining area as it could during the competition time. Figure 1 shows the graphical depiction of the competition field that was provided in the rule book [1]. The physical competition field was located inside of a tent in order to minimize the distribution and inhalation of regolith. Each person entering the tent needed to wear protective clothing and a ventilation mask. Figure 2 shows the actual competition field.