Teams

Aero Design

The Aero Design competition is centered around designing, manufacturing, and flying a remote-controlled aircraft. The specifics change every couple of years, but in general, the categories in which a team can compete are: micro class, regular class, and advanced class.

Baja SAE

The Baja team constructs a mini baja buggy. Teams compete on multiple aspects, both dynamic and static tests. Static events include a cost report and cost reduction report submitted before the competition, a business presentation, and design presentations. Dynamic events include acceleration, maneuverability, hill climb, and suspension. These events push the car to its limits and challenge the drivers!

Clean Snowmobile

The purpose of the Clean Snowmobile competition is to design the cleanest snowmobile possible in terms of emissions while matching the same performance metrics as the sleds currently on the market.

ChemE Car

The ChemE Car team is challenged every year to design a new shoe-box-sized vehicle that starts and stops based on a chemical reaction. When they arrive at the competition, the team does not know how far the vehicle must travel. They are only told the distance one hour before the competition and must use that hour to fine-tune their chosen reaction.

Concrete Canoe

The concrete canoe team designs, constructs, and competes in a canoe made entirely of concrete! Each year the rules for the design change to reflect changes in industry and promote groowth and sustainability in design and material usage. The competition consists of creating the canoe, writing a project proposal, giving a technical presentation, and racing against other schools' canoes!

Esports

The esports program participates in six major esports games including Apex, Super Smash Brothers, League of Legends (LOL), Overwatch 2, Rocket League, and Valorant. Our Varsity rosters compete in two different tournaments, the South Dakota-born Collegiate Champions League (CCL) and the NACE Star League.

Formula Racing

The Formula Hardrocker Racing team designs, builds, and competes with a formula-style autocross vehicle. The team competes in four dynamic events: autocross, endurance, skidpad, and acceleration. They also are judged in three static events: business presentation, cost report, and design tent. The competition is designed to evaluate both the performance of the car as well as the teamwork and leadership skills of the team.

Human Powered Vehicle

The Hardrocker Human Powered Vehicle team designs and creates a human-powered vehicle. Commonly, this is a bicycle but it could be any vehicle as long as the main source of power is human energy.

Mines Association of Rocketeers

Mines Association of Rocketeers, also known as MARS, competes at the annual Spaceport America Cup. It is one of the largest intercollegiate rocket engineering competitions for student rocketry teams. There, teams launch solid, liquid, and hybrid rockets to target altitudes of 10,000 and 30,000 feet.

Moonrockers

The Moonrockers compete in the Robotic Mining Challenge. The competition entails designing and programming a robot that can make its way through a lunar field containing various obstacles such as rocks and craters, as well as a surface layer of dusty limestone. The robot needs to mine down and collect material below the surface layer, before returning across the field and depositing the material it has collected. The goal is to obtain as much material as possible during the run and additional points are awarded for autonomous operations.

RoBoat Robotics

RoBoat Robotics competes at the RoboBoat Competition. The competition challenges the team to create a small autonomous boat, which navigates through a course performing various tasks. These tasks include obstacle detection and avoidance, navigation, and targeting.

Rocker Robotics

Every year the competition the Rocker Robotics team attends changes, depending on what the members vote on at the beginning of each year. The competitions are mainly for land-based vehicles with wheels or treads. The team has competed in ASME robotics challenges, the National Robotics Challenge, and the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition in past years.

Steel Bridge

The South Dakota Mines Steel Bridge Team designs and fabricates a scale steel bridge to compete in the American Institute of Steel Construction Student Steel Bridge Competition. Each year the exact specification for the bridge changes but it is generally required to be around 24 feet long, must be able to carry 2,500 lbs of steel, and is only allowed to deflect 3 inches or less. As a part of their competition, the bridge must be broken into sections that can fit into a 3'-6" by 6" by 4" box. The team is judged on how fast the bridge can be built at competition, the amount the bridge deflects, the weight of the bridge, and aesthetics

Suermileage

The goal of Supermileage is to create a vehicle that is as fuel-efficient as possible. At competition each vehicle gets a limited amount of fuel, does a set number of laps around a track, and at the end of the run, the amount of fuel left over is used to determine the miles-per-gallon that each vehicle achieved.

Unmanned Aerial Systems

The Unmanned Aerial Systems, or UAS, team competes in the Student Unmanned Aerial Systems (SUAS) competition. There, teams compete to achieve the best time in a delivery drone-style competition. They are given the target identifiers and must correctly determine their locations and safely release a payload to land within the predetermined area.