Senior Design Experience Using NASA’s Lunabotics Mining Competition: Best Practices and Evaluation of Student Learning

For the past three years, NASA has sponsored and hosted the Annual Lunabotics Mining Competition. This challenge is similar to the more familiar SAE Mini-Baja or ASCE Concrete Canoe competitions. Since its inception 2010, John Brown University has participated in NASA’s Lunabotics Mining Competition and used the project as one of several opportunities in our senior design sequence. This paper describes John Brown University’s experience with the NASA competition and formulates best practices for success based on data collected from multiple schools. It also demonstrates how participation in the Lunabot project helps meet the desired learning outcomes for senior design and evaluates the student learning involved in this team design competition. Formal assessments of ABET linked student learning outcomes show that the students in this competition demonstrate about the same level of proficiency as students in industry sponsored projects.