Mars Robot Crisis in NASA Contest

On Saturday, six teams announced their presence at a contest named NASA's 2007 Regolith Excavation Challenge that was meant to put to the test some autonomous robots in a hand-to-hand competition to determine which can move the most mock lunar dirt, called regolith, in 30 minutes.

At the Santa Maria Fairpark in Santa Maria, California, a one-ton sandbox was constructed to see who wins the $250,000 prizes. They are split into $150,000, $75,000 and $50,000 prizes respectively for first, second and third place.

The point was to stimulate teams of students to come up with original but functional designs of soil-digging robots, that also have to be small enough and able to move the most mock lunar dirt (at least 330 pounds worth) in 30 minutes, all with less than 30 kilowatts of power.

Unfortunately, before the contest comments proved to be a little too optimistic: "We've got a great group of teams," said Matt Everingham, special projects manager for the California Space Authority, a co-host for the competition. "They have a variety of configurations and a variety of construction styles...I can't wait to see them operating."

Only four teams actually attended the competition, out of the initial six that had announced their presence: Berkley, Michigan; Rolla, Missouri; Rancho Palos Verdes and Technology Ranch of Pismo Beach. Moreover, none of the teams were able to complete the main task, as the 330-pounds load proved to be a bigger burden than they expected.

Five of the six machines broke down during the competition, showing that it was not as simple as the builders had expected.

Only one robot, an excavator built by Technology Ranch of Pismo Beach did the best, collecting just over 65 kilograms (173 pounds) in half an hour. This was way below NASA expectations, so the prize rolled over to next year's competition, which will be worth $750,000.

So, it seems that digging for the money was not as fruitful as the competitors had expected, and there's still a lot of research to do to produce effective robots to dig under the Mars or the Moon's surface.

Maybe they should ask the Chinese to do it...at least they'd have excuses for the malfunctions.