About Us
Founded in August 2021, Project AV is representing Puerto Rico in the global robotics arena. Our mission is to design, build, and showcase our version of what could be the next generation of Mars rovers. Our team promotes interdisciplinary education and provides students with practical opportunities to learn about project management, systems design, manufacturing, integration, and testing. We aim to be the first Caribbean team to participate in the University Rover Challenge, hosted by the Mars Society and widely recognized as the top robotics competition for college students.
The University Rover Challenge
The University Rover Challenge (URC) is the world's premier robotics competition for college students. Held annually in the desert of southern Utah in the United States since 2007, URC challenges student teams to design and build the next generation of Mars rovers by completing 4 missions in that same competition:
Autonomous Navigation Mission
Teams must navigate their rover or drone along a designated route using the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) in conjunction with predefined markers.
Equipment Servicing Mission
Rovers shall be required to perform several dexterous operations with their robotic arm on a mock-up equipment system. The rover shall have to travel up to 0.25 km across relatively flat terrain to reach the equipment.
Extreme Delivery Mission
This will be a staged mission in which rovers shall be required to pick up and deliver objects in the field and deliver assistance to astronauts, all while traversing a wide variety of terrain, no further than 1 km from the start gate.
Science Mission
The goal is to conduct in-situ analysis, including life-detection testing of samples to determine which would be the best to be cached for further analysis given a limited cache volume.
For more information about the University Rover Challenge click down below!