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Photo courtesy of Beatriz Palacios

Photo courtesy of Beatriz Palacios

UNM runs NASA competition

Nine students, ranging from undergraduate, graduate and Ph.D. levels, and two faculty members to represent the University of New Mexico at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the NASA Swarmathon.

UNM originally proposed the idea for the Swarmathon competition several years ago after NASA requested competition suggestions from universities across the country, said Dr. Melanie Moses, a professor of computer science and principal investigator of the NASA Swarmathon.

For the past three years, UNM students and faculty have been running the NASA Swarmathon robotics competition. The 3rd Annual NASA Swarmathon was April 17 through April 19.

19 different universities sent students to compete this year, Moses said. She said the competition challenges students from across the country to create algorithms for robots that could potentially aid space exploration.

UNM students were in charge of running the competition, which included setting up the technical infrastructure and repairing robots.

According to Moses, the idea behind the challenge was that robots would go to mars and collect resources. Many students have told Moses that this was one of the only times they have had experience working hands-on out of the classroom setting addressing real world problems. She said it gives students the opportunity to collaborate on a hands on project.

The task for each team was to collect cubes and then brought back to the central collection zone — teams had the opportunity to do this twice, she said.

“In total we ran 52 of these trails. It was about 100 hours of running these robots,” Moses said.

Moses said the challenge is extremely rewarding for the students competing, but also for the UNM students running the competition. She said it is a learning experience for everyone and running the competition requires teamwork and problem solving.

At the competition, UNM students ran tutorials for the teams. Moses said UNM students are the experts at this event and the other students look up to them.

According to Antonio Griego, one of the UNM students that ran the competition, there was a massive amount of coordination and communication required to smoothly run the challenges. Griego said UNM students put in countless hours fixing bugs in the codes and helping teams troubleshoot technical problems.

“This experience — arguably more than any single class — has helped to prepare me for the real world. This has been a multi-year project with thousands of lines of code, coordinating both software and hardware engineering and teamwork,” Griego said. “I sharpened my coding skills, I learned how to collaborate in a large team, and I learned a large number of various hardware and software technical skills.”

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According to Moses, the hands on experience working with robots is extremely beneficial for students, because so much of computer science is abstract. She said this experience gives students immediate visual feedback.

Griego said that working with the teams was rewarding because you could see how excited and passionate they were about the competition. He said it was clear how much work they were putting in. Griego said he hopes that the students that competed were inspired to continue coding and working with robots.

“A hands on experience for me is the best way to learn. It is so rewarding to see the results of all of this hard work. It’s also a great proof-of-concept that we can apply what we are learning in our classes to something meaningful and large scale,” Griego said.

Megan Holmen is a freelance reporter for news and culture at the Daily Lobo. She can be contacted at news@dailylobo.com, culture@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @megan_holmen.

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