HILO — If you’re a Hawaii Island high school student wanting to study robotics in college, where do you go?
Currently, there’s one option: leave.
Members of the University of Hawaii at Hilo’s robotics club want to change that, starting with their inaugural appearance next week at the NASA Robotics Mining Competition at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Nearly 50 college teams from throughout the country are set to compete May 16-20 at the annual competition, which tasks teams to design and build a mining robot which can ultimately excavate and traverse a simulated Martian terrain.
Hilo’s six-member Vulcan Space Robotics Team is the lone team from Hawaii this year. They’re hoping their appearance helps shed light on the island’s small-but-growing, university-level robotics community. Last year, team members attended to observe but didn’t bring a robot.
“One of our biggest needs (on the Big Island) is robotics (for college students),” said John Hamilton, club faculty adviser and logistics manager at the Pacific International Space Center for Exploration Systems. “This island’s got great robotics in the elementary and secondary schools. And the high schools go to these great competitions. But there’s nothing at the university level. If you’re really good at robotics or you want to follow your dream, then you’ve got to go away to (UH) Manoa or the mainland. And often, people don’t come back.”
The field is growing: The U.S. Department of Labor forecasts more than 50,000 job openings in robotics engineering from 2008 through 2018. In 2010, robotics engineers earned a median $90,270 annually.
Some robotically inclined students do stay on island, Hamilton said, but they switch majors and “lower their dreams.”
The club wants to change that. It started a couple years ago as a way to “build a robotics base” in Hilo and encourage programs to start locally, Hamilton said. The Hilo campus even offered one robotics course last year. Most are based on Oahu within UH-Manoa’s College of Engineering.
“It’s really nice to have this (club) here, just because it shows other students, teachers, deans and department heads who make these decisions, that … students are able to, they’re willing to, and we should try to get these programs started here so students don’t have to go somewhere else,” said Carli Hand, a UH-Hilo junior studying math who eventually wants to pursue doctorate-level robotics or engineering studies. “They can stay on island and further their education on island.”
Hand and her fellow team members have spent hundreds of hours in recent months honing their mining robot, named “Spock.”
Spock — a creation made from motorcycle batteries, aluminum and a wheelchair motor, among other parts — will have 10 minutes during the competition to collect as much regolith — essentially space dirt — as possible on the simulated terrain.
The challenge has “particular relevance to NASA’s mission of pioneering a human presence on Mars,” according to information on NASA’s website. Robotic mining is the first step in “in-situ resource utilization,” which means materials found on space are processed into oxygen, water, rocket fuel and other resources.
“You don’t take everything with you,” Hamilton said. “You go there and utilize the resources around. With a mining robot, you’re going to scoop up the loose dust, and that has resources in it, like oxygen which you can use to make (for example) water.”
Spock isn’t perfect. Team members said last week they’ve devoted hours to fixing the robot’s “mechanical issues” and haven’t had time to develop software which would render him autonomous. Currently, he’s manually controlled. Next year, they want to send a new-and-improved version of Spock.
And they want more Big Island schools to compete.
“What we’d really like to see is one year UH-Hilo has a team and (Hawaii Community College) has a team,” Hamilton said. “We’re trying to build robotics from the ground up.”
Vulcan Space Robotics Team members are Ethan Paguirigan, Carli Hand, Daryl Albano, Derek Hand, Stepane Mapes and Michael Weber. Faculty lead is Marc Roberts. The team is still raising money and is accepting donations for help with trip expenses all next week. To donate, visit the Go Fund Me page at: gofundme.com/zspgz2e4.