The URC is a yearly international competition hosted by the Mars Society. Students construct a planetary rover to complete four tasks that are 30-60 minutes long. Those tasks include: Extreme Retrieval, Equipment Servicing, Autonomous Navigation, & In-situ Life Detection. Although a Drone section has been added in response to the Inspiration UAV.
The rover is limited to 50 kg of weight at any point, but can swap out payloads between missions. And has a limited value of $18,500 (USD) for all rover parts.
I have been involved in the WVU Team Mountaineers since Fall 2017. I was a team mechanical lead for the 2018-19 rover, a mentor for the 2019-2020 rover, the overall team lead for the 2020-21 rover, and still involved to this day as a mentor.
I am proud to have been the 2021 team lead and worked with such an amazing team! We managed to qualify for Finals, and place in the top 10 in the Extreme Retrieval & Equipment Servicing missions!
Team Mountaineers URC 2021 System Acceptance Review Video that I narrated and co-authored the voice over. Michael Backus was the editor and other co-author.
The Extreme Retrieval mission involves the robot picking up various items in the field and delivering them to another location over rough terrain via teleoperation. These items can include screwdrivers, med-kits, rope, ammo cans, and more.
Equipment Servicing is a teleoperation mission where the rover has to service a lander. Where they turn screws, flip switches, type on a keyboard, (un)plug a USB stick, load a ammo can into it, and more.
Autonomous Navigation involves the rover navigating rough terrain to GPS waypoints to locate an Aruco marker. The GPS coordinates become increasingly less accurate as the robot progresses.
The science mission of this competition involves conducting onboard tests to determine if a soil sample has signs of life, and whether it is alive or dead. This teleoperation mission involves the collection of soil and analysis of those samples over a short period. Where a presentation is given shortly after the collection to present and justify the teams findings.
URC 2017 - 18
URC 2018 - 19
URC 2019 - 20
URC 2020 - 2021
Team Mountaineers URC 2021 System Acceptance Review Video that I narrated and co-authored the voice over.
URC 2021 Competition
Here are the URC 2021 Published Scores. We scored top 10 in this international competition despite having a 45-50% point weight penalty! The rover was over the weight requirement. However, we have since made it a large point to reduce weigh and have been able to get back within the 50kg maximum. We look forward to climbing up the leaderboard in the URC 2022 competition year!
URC 2021- 22