University Rover Challenge 2022 (URC22)

After 2 years of cancelled competitions thanks to the pandemic, I finally got to attend URC with my robotics team, R3!

The competition takes place at the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in Hanksville, Utah, which simulates a Martian environment. Student-designed rovers from Universities around the world compete against each other in four different missions: science (i.e. soil and environmental analyses), extreme retrieval, equipment servicing, and autonomous navigation - tasks that would be required of an actual Mars rover.

Our rover, Navi, made the cut to the final round of the competition at the MDRS, where we ultimately placed 11th out of 99 initial competitors. We faced quite a few issues during the competition, a lot of which were caused by our limited prep time due to pandemic restrictions, but we still managed to come through with a decent position.

Despite all of that, it was a very fun and rewarding experience - my only disappointment is that I've now graduated and can't attend next year's competition!