As University students work on final papers and prepare lengthy study guides, a group of engineering students’ final project is earning them something more valuable than a high grade.
As part of their capstone student design project, mechanical engineering seniors Chandler Scheuermann, Robert Fink, Wes Leblanc, Derek Duplessis and Andrew Perkins became the first University team to compete in the NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge on April 17 amd 18. They ranked 6th among college teams from around the world, taking the Southeastern Conference title and receiving the Rookie of the Year Award.
For the competition, the “Fightin’ Tigers” spent all year designing and building their human-powered rover, Mike I, from scratch.
The challenge took place at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. It required students to race with their rovers through a .75-mile obstacle course simulating the terrain found on other planets, asteroids or the moon.
“[Making the rover was] probably the most challenging and most entertaining part,” Scheuermann said. “There was a lot of catchup [for us], considering that a lot of these teams have been in [the competition] for 20 years, so for us who had little to no operational knowledge whatsoever about what to expect was a little bit daunting, but we did our fair amount of research and did what we thought would be successful.”
This year’s challenge had 95 registered teams from high schools, colleges and universities from 18 states and Puerto Rico, as well as from Germany, Russia, India and Mexico, according to the NASA website.
Scheuermann said the college division of the challenge was comprised of 47 teams.
Engineering capstone projects tend to be funded by companies, like ExxonMobil, because the companies come to the University with problems for students to look at, Scheuermann said.
“In our case, it was a little bit of an added challenge in having to go out and approach sponsors individually saying, ‘Hey, we have something that we want to do for the first time here at LSU. Would you be interested in helping us,’” Scheuermann said. “Fortunately, we got a lot of interest generated in it.”
Fink said the members of the team were placed together because of their shared interest in the project, but they barely knew each other in the beginning. However, the long hours spent in the workshop brought the team closer together.
The team was welcomed by groups from other institutions during the competition, and other teams were impressed with the University students’ first attempt at the challenge, Scheuermann said.
“We were very surprised at first. We didn’t expect to do as well as we did,” Fink said. “Since it’s been done, we are very proud of ourselves. We worked really hard so we think we deserved it, and at the same time, we’re very humble and very grateful. It could’ve easily gone the other way, and the rover could’ve failed for a silly reason.”
Scheuermann said the team is looking forward to working closely with underclassmen taking on the challenge next year and in the future.
“Aside from the longevity of [the team], hoping to be able to come back in 10 or 15 years and say that we were a part of this being able to remain competitive and performing well each and every year is something that we, and the department, would really like to see [in the future],” Scheuermann said.