2024-2025 Outreach

Outreach Events 2024 - 2025

The Alabama Astrobotics Team participates in many outreach events each cycle. Events range from on-campus demonstrations to elementary school visits with the aim to inspire students to be involved and interested in STEM activities and careers. We are always looking for new outreach opportunities!

Remote Driving Events

This year, Alabama Astrobotics hosted two remote driving events where we let both students and educators remotely operate our robot. The first event (pictured on the left) was on UN Moon Day, where we let students from across the globe operate our robot and navigate obstacles. For the second event (pictured on the right), we partnered with Dobyns Bennett High School from Kingsport, TN, to remotely drive our robot. These events served as a way to educate students about NASA's Artemis Missions and our team, as well as to highlight the unique challenges that come with rover teleoperation, such as the way lunar regolith behaves and latency issues.

IEEE Telepresence

This year, Alabama Astrobotics was invited to the first annual IEEE Telepresence Conference and Robopalooza Event by NASA's Rob Mueller. The team traveled to Lucerne Valley, California, and demonstrated the capabilities of our 2024 competition rover, Turbo, as well as competed in a rover teleoperation competition.

Alabama Space Day

This year, the team was invited by Melissa Simmons of the Alabama Space Grant Consortium to participate in Alabama Space Day at the Alabama State Capitol Building in Montgomery. While there, we had the opportunity, alongside industry partners, to educate Montgomery K-12 students about the future of space exploration and how they can get involved. The team also had the unique opportunity to speak to one of our state senators and lobby for more funding for K-12 space education.

Space Days

The University of Alabama Space Days is an annual College of Engineering event that brings together industry leaders and UA student groups. Alabama Astrobotics presented a robot demo to several aerospace industry leaders and discussed the 2025 LUNABOTICS competition. Additionally, Alabama Astrobotics was recognized by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center Director, Joseph Pelfrey, this year.

Walker Elementary School

Two Alabama Astrobotics members spoke to the 4th and 5th grade students at Walker Elementary about what we do as a team, how a championship-winning robot operates. We talked about NASA's Artemis Missions and how Astrobotics contributes to them. We also gave a lesson on how to use Scratch, where students created a lunar rover navigation game with a sprite modeled after NASA's lunar mining rover, RASSOR.

Bama in Your Town

This year, Alabama Astrobotics was invited by UA to a Bama in Your Town event at the Alabama Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville. Bama in Your Town serves as a way to showcase to high school upperclassman the unique opportunities they have if they choose to pursue higher education at the University of Alabama. We, along with several other student design teams, educated students about NASA's Artemis Missions, what we do, and why they should choose the University of Alabama to pursue a degree in engineering.

West Alabama Worlds of Work

Alabama Astrobotics provided an active display showcasing space robotics and potential careers at Shelton State Community College located here in Tuscaloosa, AL, for Worlds of Work (WoW). WoW is a career expo that brings numerous industry leaders and education partners together to showcase opportunities and careers to K-12 students in the area.

MATHCOUNTS

Alabama Astrobotics was invited by Dr. Lina Pu to educate middle school students participating in a MATHCOUNTS competition about NASA's Artemis Missions, our team, and the impact they can have on the future of space exploration.

Get on Board Day and College of Engineering Open House

Get on Board Day is a semi-annual event for UA student groups to recruit new members. We showcase our organization to thousands of students who attend UA and are looking for opportunities that the University provides. This year, the University also held an open house where we spoke to engineering students about our organization and NASA's Artemis Missions.

E-Day

Alabama Astrobotics ran a table at E-Day, an open house event that provides high school sophomores through seniors the chance to learn more about majors and career opportunities available in engineering and computer science.

VEXIQ Competitions

This year, Alabama Astrobotics members refereed and judged two VEX IQ Robotics competitions in our state. Our volunteers traveled to Walker Elementary School and Jefferson County International Baccalaureate School. The competitors completed both remote-controlled and autonomous runs. Our members were responsible for scoring each team's runs. We also gave a short presentation at Jefferson County IB along with UASPACE about NASA's Artemis Missions and space-related student projects at the University.

Walker Elementary School

Jefferson County IB

STEM Showcase

Alabama Astrobotics set up an exhibit of our robot at this year's STEM Showcase and also served as project judges. STEM Showcase is an on-campus science fair for middle schoolers to work with UA professors on a research project. The event serves to promote awareness of and engagement with STEM research and careers.

Science Olympiad

This year, Alabama Astrobotics had the opportunity to serve our community and facilitate STEM education by judging at a regional Science Olympiad competition. The team judged the Robot Tour event, where students were tasked with programming a robot to autonomously traverse a maze and reach several different target zones on the field.

Alabama Astrobotics Lab Tours

Every year, Alabama Astrobotics welcomes visitors from across the country to visit our lab on the University's campus. We ask each visitor to place a blue sticker on the map to mark their hometown. Each red sticker on the map marks our team members' hometowns.