University Rover Challenge
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The University Rover Challenge (URC) by the
Mars Society The Mars Society is a nonprofit organization that advocates for human exploration and colonization of Mars. It was founded by Robert Zubrin in 1998 and its principles are based on Zubrin's Mars Direct philosophy, which aims to make human miss ...
is a robotics competition for university level students that challenges teams to design and build a rover that would be of use to early explorers on Mars. The competition is held annually at the
Mars Desert Research Station The Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) is the largest and longest-running Mars surface research facility and is one of two simulated Mars analog habitats owned and operated by the Mars Society. The MDRS station was built in the early 2000s ne ...
, outside
Hanksville, Utah Hanksville is a small town in Wayne County, Utah, Wayne County, Utah, United States, at the junction of State Routes Utah State Route 24, 24 and Utah State Route 95, 95. The population was 219 at the 2010 United States Census, 2010 census. Sit ...
in the United States. The site was selected by the Mars Society for its geographic similarity to Mars: In addition to being a largely barren desert area, the soil in the area has a chemical composition similar to Martian soil. The competition has also expanded internationally to include the
European Rover Challenge European Rover Challenge (ERC, ERC Space & Robotics) is an annual Rover (space exploration), Martian robot competition held in Poland. It began in 2014 at the ''Regional Science and Technology Centre'' in Chęciny, and until 2023 has been held in J ...

Canadian International Rover ChallengeIndian Rover ChallengeAnatolian Rover Challenge
and th
Australian Rover Challenge
The aim of the University Rover Challenge is to encourage students to develop skills in robotics, improve the state-of-the-art in rovers, and work in multi-disciplinary teams with collaboration between scientists and engineers. The competition was launched in 2006 with competitions held annually every summer since 2007.


History


Inception

The URC was first established in 2006 with the goal of promoting STEM education and inspiring the next generation of space explorers. Since its inception, the competition has grown in scale and significance, attracting teams from universities and institutions worldwide. The idea behind the URC's creation is that the kinds of rovers teams are building would assist astronauts in the field, controlled remotely by another astronaut. This imagined use case drives the competition's emphasis on teleoperation and ability to perform tasks that a human might need to. (Such as equipment servicing and retrieval and delivery) In its first year, only 4 teams competed: University of Nevada Reno, Brigham Young University, Penn State University, and University of California Los Angeles. There were only 2 tasks, a Science Task, and a task to deploy a mock radio repeater in the field. URC spokesperson Kevin Sloan says they were unsure what to expect, but were "blown way by the quality". University of Nevada Reno won that year, winning a $5000 cash prize, which was reduced to $1000 in subsequent years.


Evolution of Tasks

Since its inception in 2006, with 4 US teams, the competition has grown substantially, with 95 teams from 12 countries in 2018, and a total of 35 rovers selected to compete, their teams totaling more than 500 students. The tasks have also undergone significant changes over the years, evolving from the 2 simple tasks of the first year to the 4 robust tasks of 2019, and continuing to get more challenging every year. Detailed information about years 2007 - 2009 is unavailable, but by 2010 there were 4 tasks: Sample Return, Site Survey, Equipment Servicing, and Emergency Navigation. In its 2010 incarnation, sample return involved choosing a sample to bring back with the rover, then doing analysis on it at the base and presenting to the judges on its scientific significance. Site survey involved analysis of a site from potentially far away. Equipment servicing most notably required teams to plug in a 3-prong plug into an outlet, and emergency navigation was a timed challenge in which rovers were to locate astronauts as fast as possible. In addition to these tasks teams scored points on a presentation they gave to judges on the design of their rover. The following two years saw tweaks in the content of tasks to make them increasingly challenging, but the spirit of each task remained the same. For example, in 2012, the emergency navigation task was designed such that in order to reach some of the astronauts rovers would need to pass into areas where they would lose communication with their operators and thus need to operate autonomously for a time. In 2013 the Site Survey task was replaced with Terrain Traversing, which tested rovers capability of navigating through difficult terrain. 2016 introduced a formal down-selection process, including a CDR (Critical Design Review) which took the place of the Presentation task, and a semi-finals round of competition. The next year, 2017, replaced Astronaut Assistance with Extreme Retrieval and Delivery (a mix of astronaut assistance and terrain traversing), Sample Return with Science Cache, and Terrain Traversing with Autonomous Traversal, an entirely new challenge which explicitly required teams to implement autonomous behavior on their rovers. Finally, 2018 and 2019 have seen this task structure preserved, with increases in difficulty and complexity. Notably, the 2019 Science task requires detection of life aboard the rover, whereas in 2018 teams could bring back samples to conduct tests at the base.


Teams

The number and diversity of teams has also grown significantly over the competition's lifespan. In 2018, 95 teams representing 10 different countries registered, 36 of which were selected to compete. Teams from the US generally make up the majority, but teams from Canada, Poland, and in more recent years, India, are also strongly represented. Poland in particular, fielding their first team in 2009, has been particularly competitive. A Polish team from Czestochowa University of Technology won the 2018 competition, making 6 consecutive years Poland has been represented on the podium. Some teams have been competed for many years in a row. Notably the team from
Brigham Young University Brigham Young University (BYU) is a Private education, private research university in Provo, Utah, United States. It was founded in 1875 by religious leader Brigham Young and is the flagship university of the Church Educational System sponsore ...
is the only team to have participated in every competition from 2006 to 2018, consistently placing in the top 5. That team is funded primarily by the
Mechanical Engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines and mechanism (engineering), mechanisms that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and engineering mathematics, mathematics principl ...
, Electrical Engineering and Physics departments at BYU.


Tasks (2019)

Specific scenario details change each year as teams master given tasks and to encourage flexibility in designs and improve the capabilities of the rovers each year. Rovers are required to perform tele-operated or autonomous tasks that would assist astronauts in the field. Tele-operated tasks are performed from control stations with no direct view of the rover, only what can be determined via video and data links from the rover or sensors deployed by the rover. It is assumed the operators are also on Mars so there is no time-delay in communications. For 2019 tasks include:


System Acceptance Review (SAR)

Teams must submit a written report and a short video describing and demonstrating the design and capabilities of the rover to perform the required tasks, scientific plan, and team management.


Science Mission

''"The goal is to conduct in-situ analysis with the rover, including life detection testing of samples"'' Teams must investigate multiple sites of biological interest, using instruments and methods of their choice, where they must conduct analysis of samples entirely on board the rover. The goal of the task is to determine the presence or absence of life, either extinct or extant, at designated sites. After the 20–30 minutes of investigation time, teams must also prepare a short presentation to give to the judges on-site, which presents their results, analysis, and conclusions. Analysis is expected to be relevant to the setting on Earth while demonstrating an understanding of how these observations would translate to a Martian setting.


Extreme Retrieval and Delivery Mission

''"rovers shall be required to pick up and deliver objects in the field, and deliver assistance to astronauts"'' Rovers must pick up and deliver objects in the field, such as screwdrivers, hammers, toolboxes, rocks, etc. Rovers are required to traverse a wide variety of terrain—anything from soft sandy areas, to rock and boulder fields, to vertical drops. Teams are given approximate GPS coordinates for each pickup and delivery location, and potentially specific instructions for particular objects. Scoring is based on teams' ability to pick up and deliver objects to their correct locations.


Equipment Servicing Mission

''"Rovers shall be required to perform several dexterous operations on a mock-up equipment system."'' Possible operations outlined in the rules for 2019 include: * Operate a joystick, push buttons, flip switches, turn knobs * Tighten captive screw to secure drawer * Replace an electronics board using a rugged board-to-board connector * Turn a hand crank 2017 required rovers to tow a wagon carrying a fuel canister to a generator, fill up the fuel tank, swap the regulator on gas cylinders, and start the generator by pressing a button. Previous equipment tasks have included pumping air into an inflatable habitat, and cleaning solar panels.


Autonomous Travel Mission

''"Rovers shall be required to autonomously traverse between markers in this staged mission across moderately difficult terrain."'' Here, autonomous means without teleoperation—that is, without operators from the base station giving commands or user input. The rover must do all its decision-making on board. However, teleoperated scouting is allowed in the earlier stages. The markers in this task are tennis balls and approximate GPS coordinates given to teams. As the stages get more difficult, the GPS coordinates will become increasingly vague and there will be more obstacles between the tennis balls, requiring obstacle avoidance and autonomous route finding. In addition, teleoperated scouting is allowed in the earlier stages, but not in the later ones.


Rules and Regulations (2019)


Rover Rules

* Rovers must not exceed 50 kg in any one configuration * Rovers must fit within a 1.2 meter by 1.2 meter footprint * Rovers must have a total cost not exceeding $18,000 * Rovers must use power and propulsion systems that are applicable to operations on Mars (e.g. no air-breathing systems) * Use of airborne vehicles is prohibited


Operation Rules

* Teams will operate their rovers in real time from designated command and control stations. * Rovers are not expected to travel more than 1 km from the base station * Nobody may follow alongside the rover for the purpose of providing feedback to the operators, though members of the judging team, media, non-operator team members, and other spectators may follow a rover at the judges' discretion.


Team Rules

* There is no restriction on the number of team members or operators allowed. * Team members may be undergraduate or graduate students and teams are permitted to include high school students as well * Students must be enrolled in at least a half time degree or high school diploma granting course. * Students from multiple universities may compete on the same team, and a single university may field multiple teams, as long as there is no overlap between team members, budget, or equipment.


Judging

A panel of judges conducts the judging, and this panel changes from year to year. Some effort is made to have a diversity of experience on the judging team, and past judges have included persons with professional experience as: systems engineers, biologists, roboticists, industrial designers, scientists and professors of varied fields. Judges are volunteers.


Funding

Teams raise the money for the rovers themselves, through their university and/or outside sponsors. The competition itself is funded in part by the
Mars Society The Mars Society is a nonprofit organization that advocates for human exploration and colonization of Mars. It was founded by Robert Zubrin in 1998 and its principles are based on Zubrin's Mars Direct philosophy, which aims to make human miss ...
, Protocase Inc, (a custom parts manufacturer, which offers teams credit and discounts for all parts manufactured at Protocase),
Honeybee Robotics Honeybee Robotics, LLC is an American subsidiary of Blue Origin that builds advanced spacecraft, robotic rovers, and other technologies for the exploration of Mars and other planetary bodies in deep space. The company, headquartered in Longmont ...
, and
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
.


See also

*
Colonization of Mars 475px, Map of the year each country achieved List of sovereign states by date of formation, independence. Colonization (British English: colonisation) is a process of establishing occupation of or control over foreign territories or peoples f ...
*
Exploration of Mars The planet Mars has been explored remotely by spacecraft. Uncrewed spacecraft, Probes sent from Earth, beginning in the late 20th century, have yielded a large increase in knowledge about the Martian system, focused primarily on understanding G ...
* Haughton-Mars Project *
Life on Mars The possibility of life on Mars is a subject of interest in astrobiology due to the planet's proximity and similarities to Earth. To date, no conclusive evidence of past or present life has been found on Mars. Cumulative evidence suggests that ...
*
Human mission to Mars The idea of sending humans to Mars has been the subject of aerospace engineering and scientific studies since the late 1940s as part of the broader exploration of Mars. Long-term proposals have included sending settlers and terraforming the p ...
*
MARS-500 The MARS-500 mission was a psychosocial isolation experiment conducted between 2007 and 2011 by Russia, the European Space Agency, and China, in preparation for an unspecified future crewed spaceflight to the planet Mars. The experiment's ...
*
Mars Desert Research Station The Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) is the largest and longest-running Mars surface research facility and is one of two simulated Mars analog habitats owned and operated by the Mars Society. The MDRS station was built in the early 2000s ne ...
*
Mars Direct Mars Direct is a proposal for a human mission to Mars which purports to be both cost-effective and possible with current technology. It was originally detailed in a research paper by Martin Marietta engineers Robert Zubrin and David Baker in 19 ...
* Mars to Stay *
Space colonization Space colonization (or extraterrestrial colonization) is the human settlement, settlement or colonization of outer space and astronomical bodies. The concept in its broad sense has been applied to any permanent human presence in space, such ...


References


External links

{{Commons category
Mars Society University Rover ChallengeMars SocietyMars Desert Research Station
Mars Society Mars rovers Rover Challenge Series Student robotics competitions