The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has invited the student community to design and realise a wheeled/legged rover for future missions.
ISRO said that post the successful landing of the Chandrayaan-3 Vikram on the lunar surface and the Pragyan exploring near to the southern pole of the moon, it is time to look at future robotic exploration missions to the Moon and other planetary bodies.
Unique opportunities
“It has been a constant endeavour at ISRO that we create unique opportunities for academia and industry to participate in the technology developmental activities commensurate with organisational objectives. In line with these objectives, U.R. Rao Satellite Centre (URSC) solicits from the youth of India, innovative ideas and designs of robotic rovers for future missions through the conduct of ISRO Robotics Challenge-URSC (IRoC-U 2024),” ISRO said.
ISRO added that it is inviting the student community for the design and realisation of a wheeled/legged rover encompassing the development of complete hardware and software.
“The objective here is to provide development opportunities in space robotics to the participating entities and to leverage the creative thinking among the youth of our nation for ISRO interplanetary missions,” ISRO said.
It added the solutions provided by the students in IRoC-U 2024 have the greater chances of getting incorporated into ISRO’s future interplanetary robotics missions.
“IRoC-U 2024 consists of an engineering project where the institutional teams build robots to compete on an extra-terrestrial inspired arena, performing tasks based on the real life challenges faced by space robotics,” the space agency said.
Cut off date
The registration for the IRoC-U 2024 opens on November 20 and the submission of registration form along with proposal should be completed before December 15.
The final onsite competition to perform the required tasks is planned to be conducted in URSC Bengaluru campus in August 2024. The award ceremony would be held on August 23 which has declared as National Space Day.