Introduction
We are the Computer Science and Electronic Engineering (CSEE) Society at the University of Essex, and this year we have entered a team into UKSEDS’ Olympus Rover Trials (ORT) for the first time! UKSEDS is a charity dedicated to helping UK students gain experience in the space sector, something that has been quite hard to achieve in the past. ORT is one of the competitions that they run, where teams of students work together to design a scale “Mars rover” to meet an objective set by UKSEDS. This year, the objective is to scan QR codes positioned on rocks placed at various locations, with scanning the QR code representing taking a rock sample.
What we’ve achieved
The team was selected at the start of the academic year, back in October 2024, consisting of students with a wide variety of levels of experience, from Foundation year students all the way to PhD students. We then began working as a team to create our preliminary concept for the rover.
The UKSEDS competitions follow a similar approach to the stages of a real mission within the industry, with the first major review being the Preliminary Design Review. At this stage, teams submit a document detailing their design and get feedback from industry experts on the concept proposed. This was really helpful and we were able to make meaningful changes to our design based on the feedback we received.
Work on the rover began in earnest in January, as we worked towards our Critical Design Review, the next review stage. This involved starting to choose specific parts, making sure to stay within budget, and the initial CAD work. We decided we would construct our rover from aluminium extrusion and power it with a Raspberry Pi. We also selected the motors and battery at this stage.
Working together as a team, we were able to rapidly iterate, and the design of the rover changed dramatically during this stage of development! Above is the CAD design we started with at the beginning of the process, and below is our final CAD model by the time we had completed our CDR.
Once the CDR was completed, it was time to start building the rover. We are grateful to have been sponsored by RS as part of the RS Student Fund, which provided us with the money and parts needed for us to construct the rover.
Challenges we’ve faced
As this is the first year the society has entered a team to the ORT, or any competition for that matter, there were quite a few challenges we had to overcome. The majority of them were technical (building a rover isn’t as easy as it looks!), such as knowing how to choose parts or learning how to write documents at the required standard.
There were also other non-technical hurdles, some of which are somewhat unexpected. For example, we had to work with the University to secure a lab space to use, and also learn how to complete risk assessments for the construction of the rover, something else we’d never done before!
Next steps
The ORT culminates in a test day at Airbus’ Mars Yard facility, with the eight highest-scoring teams in the CDR making it through. Unfortunately, we came 10th, so haven’t made it through to the test day. However, we are still continuing to build the rover, with construction taking place. The team are very proud of what we have achieved, coming into the competition with no previous experience, yet still coming very close to qualifying for test day. We have learnt a lot of valuable lessons throughout the competition, from engineering skills to teamworking. We can’t wait to have another go next year and hopefully get even further!
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