Mars Rover Manipal (MRM), the student rover design team from Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT) blazed a glorious trail at the 13th edition of University Rover Challenge held in Utah, USA, from May 30 to June 1, 2019.
A press release here on Saturday said MRM, Manipal Academy of Higher Education’s official team powered by Mouser Electronics and Echjay Industries was the winner among the Asian challengers and finished 8th globally out of the 84 teams that participated. MRM also won the Barainca award for the best science team in the competition.
For the fourth consecutive year, MRM has been amongst the top 36 international teams and was one of the only 5 teams from India to make it to the final stage of URC’ 19 at the Mars Desert Research System along with IIT Bombay, IIT Madras, VIT Vellore and SRM.
University Rover Challenge (URC) is the world’s premier robotics competition for UG students. Held in the desert of southern Utah, URC challenges interdisciplinary student teams to design and build the next generation of Mars Rovers.
These rovers are designed to be capable of traversing and performing tasks on Mars-simulated terrain, in goals of aiding human exploration of the red planet. The competition requires participants to complete four missions — the Science mission, the Autonomous Traversal mission, the Extreme Retrieval and Delivery Mission and the Equipment Servicing mission.
The MRM team was led by Safal Ajmera and V. Sai Shyam. “It was great to see the hard work by the team has brought success. We got to learn and make everyone proud. The feeling of representing the institute and country cannot be expressed,” said Safal Ajmera. “The team has been remarkable at work since the start. It has been a wonderful experience during the competition, lots to learn and showcase,” said V. Sai Shyam.
