This year, the Florida A & M University-Florida State University College of Engineering is continuing its interdisciplinary collaboration between the Electrical/Computer Engineering and the Mechanical Engineering Departments for their Senior Design Projects.  The goal of the project is to expose senior students to the concepts of design, project management, engineering team organization, and professionalism.  Five undergraduate students from both universities have been selected to participate in this project, as well as five graduate students for advising and construction assistance. The requirements of the Lunar Regolith Excavator Student Competition are as follows: design a robot capable of excavating 10 kg of regolith in 15 minutes while weighing less than 80 kg.

The team is tasked with creating a robot capable of meeting and exceeding all requirements set forth by NASA for the competition. As the students are designing, constructing, synthesizing and analyzing their robot, they will perform community outreach for K-12 grade students in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM).