Short Takes

June 19, 2019 | Jim Townsend

Robotics team takes a 1st and 3rd in 4th and final NASA Swarmathon

University of Houston-Clear Lake computer engineering students, along with students from San Jacinto College North, took the first-place prize for a video explaining the team’s robotic “Mission to Mars” in NASA’s fourth and final Swarmathon competition held June 11-13 at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The video depicted how an unmanned spaceship could land inside a Martian lava tube, deploy robotic rovers to collect soil samples, and deposit the samples for analysis which would be radioed back to Earth. The analysis would help scientists determine whether the Martian soil would support plant life in greenhouse conditions.

The team took third place in the “physical” portion of the competition. “This is the toughest and most prestigious competition where teams have to program the robots to search for targets and retrieve them to a collection zone area,” said UH-Clear Lake Assistant Professor of Computer Engineering Luong Nguyen, who accompanied the team. “The top three teams were awarded trophies and cash prizes.”

UHCL computer science students who participated include Dean Althauser, Ben Carpenter, Cody Farlow, Jose Gama, Omar Olabi, Justin Tarwater and Gladys Trevino.

NASA’s Minority University Research Program funded the Swarmathon events, which were organized by University of New Mexico’s Moses Biological Computation Lab and held at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Since its 2016 inception, students from UHCL and San Jac North have consistently finished strong in the competition: a sixth-place finish in 2016; fourth place in 2017 and second place in 2018. Each year, the competition featured programming tasks of increasing complexity.

Students competed to program robot rovers to simulate autonomous tasks they would encounter on Mars. Teams competed in virtual and physical events, writing code to instruct NASA-provided rovers, called “Swarmies.”  The purpose of the competition is to push the development of robotic swarm technology. Ideally, each robot needs to be “aware” of where it is, what it is doing and communicate that information to other robots so that they can self-organize and cooperate in the task.

Find out more about educational opportunities in computer engineering and robotics by visiting www.uhcl.edu/science-engineering or calling 281-283-3700.

UHCL’s summer Friday Morning lecture series begins July 12

University of Houston-Clear Lake’s Friday Morning Continuing Education summer miniseries begins July 12 with two lectures to attend. The program is open to all, regardless of age, residency, or academic background. 

At 9 a.m., recent UH-Clear Lake graduate Adam Kolenc will discuss his typical day as a Houston firefighter, with all its challenges and rewards. Learn how men and women get into the field and the different careers within Houston Fire Department.

Then at 11 a.m., learn about the history, culture and politics of Taiwan from Roselyn Wang, Mandarin instructor for UHCL’s Foreign Language Program. Considering if Taiwan is in your future vacation plans, this course is for you.

The cost for each class in the summer miniseries is $12 after a $12 membership fee. To register or for more information, visit www.uhcl.edu/academics/extended/friday-morning-ce or call 281-283-3033.