Cross-cutting analysis
The twelve subsystem chapters answer what the options are for one part of the rover. Five questions cross all of them and decide whether a first build is coherent: what the whole rover masses and draws, what fights what, how rovers fail, what separates the top teams, and where the competition is going. The subsystem chapters remain the authority on any single subsystem. What crosses between them is the subject of this part.
Key takeaways
- The envelope, not the 2027 task list, sets the budget. The 50 kg limit has been in the rules since 2007, the 70 kg fielded union since 2015 and the 1.2 m cube since 2019, with no exception in the record S-URC07-RULES-L1 S-URC15-RULES S-URC19-RULES S-URC27-RULES §2.a.ii–iii.
- A first build should target 45–46 kg with 4 kg of reserve, 400–500 Wh of pack and a 3.7 kW peak capability. The measured field sits at 33–53 kg, and the pack is sized by peak current as often as by energy.
- Sixty-six interfaces exist between twelve subsystems and 37 of them are high criticality. The arm and perception each touch nine, so deferring either is a choice to re-open the most work.
- The largest point loss in the field is an autonomy capability gap, not comms. Sixty-seven of 162 finals entries scored exactly zero on autonomy, 41 % of the sample, worth about 610 of the roughly 945 mission points the field forgoes each year.
The five questions
| Question | The answer in one line | Page |
|---|---|---|
| What does the whole rover mass and draw? | 45–46 kg with 4 kg of reserve; 249 W average and 3.7 kW at peak; 400–500 Wh of pack | Mass and power |
| What fights what? | 66 interfaces, 37 of them high; the arm and compute each touch nine, and a wheel diameter change re-opens seven | Interfaces and couplings |
| How do rovers fail? | 54 sourced entries in thirteen classes; the expensive class is autonomy, the published class is the arm | How rovers fail |
| What separates the top from the rest? | The three hard missions and the absence of zeros, not the review; one zero is worth about 11 places and 85 points | What separates the top from the rest |
| Where is the competition going? | The physical envelope is frozen and the capability content is not | Where the competition is going |
| What does it add up to? | Ten system-level conclusions for a first-time team | Ten system-level conclusions |
What the field publishes
The evidence base is thin and the thinness is part of the finding. Fourteen of 187 team-years (7.5 %) in the 2022–2026 record carry a published total mass, exactly one mass was read off a judge’s scale, one team publishes a subsystem breakdown, and no team publishes a measured watt-hour figure for a mission S-CENSUS S-MIST-VURC2021 S-MONASH-GH-NOVA.
| Quantity | Published in the field | Consequence for the analysis |
|---|---|---|
| Total mass of a competition rover | 14 of 187 team-years (7.5 %) | Every distribution rests on teams that chose to publish |
| Judge-weighed mass | 1 (MIST Phoenix, virtual URC 2021, 42.1 kg) | The only number that is a measurement S-MIST-VURC2021 |
| Subsystem mass breakdown | 1 (Monash Banksia 2026, rolling chassis and arm only) | Mass fractions are one case plus two allocations S-MONASH-GH-NOVA |
| Measured energy per mission | 0 | Every energy figure on these pages is a model |
| Centre-of-gravity table | 0 | Every tip-angle figure is an estimate with its basis stated |
Each quantitative page states the sample behind its numbers, and where a chart plots fewer configurations than the table beside it. The full dataset can be filtered on the mass and power page.
The numbers worth carrying into a first build
| Number | Value | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Design mass | 45–46 kg with 4 kg of reserve | The cap is 50 kg, the last 3 kg of a first build arrive in the final six weeks, and the penalty is 5 % of that event’s points per kilogram over S-URC27-RULES §2.a.iii |
| Pack | 400–500 Wh at 8S, two packs rather than one | Above the 289 Wh the back-to-back mission pair needs, and the current rating comes free with 4P |
| Interface count | 66, of which 37 high | A late arm change re-opens nine interfaces; a wheel-diameter change re-opens seven |
| Zero rate | 41 % on autonomy | One zero costs about 11 places and 85 points S-URC-RESULTS |
How to read this part
A team sizing its first budget starts with mass and power, because the mass budget and the pack are the two constraints that every other decision spends. The interface page turns that budget into a freeze order: which numbers must be fixed at the preliminary design review and which can wait. The failure page decides where the test effort goes.
The last two pages are the field view. Top versus rest shows which missions produce the score gap. Trends shows which rules have moved and which have not. The ten conclusions collect the decision-relevant ones in one place.
Open problems
- No measured energy figure exists. A single logged 30-minute discharge with a power meter would turn the whole power model into a calibration, and no team in the field publishes one.
- No team publishes a centre-of-gravity table or a mass budget, so every stability and fraction number rests on stated bases rather than measurement.
- The record is a publication census. Teams write up the failures that drove a redesign and leave the rest; the judges’ statement that comms is the most common problem and the database’s tie between comms and the arm are both true statements about different things.
- Two rule questions remain open and change a design: whether a drone counts toward the 70 kg fielded total, and whether the Equipment Servicing cache is the team’s own astrobiology cache S-URC27-RULES §2.b.vii.
Further reading
- Mass and power is the budget chapter, with the 17 mass configurations and the pack arithmetic.
- Interfaces and couplings carries the 12 × 12 matrix, the forty-one-row register and the three chains.
- How rovers fail carries the taxonomy, the zero record and the FMEA tripwires.
- Subsystem studies are the authority on each subsystem; Mission backfit maps the 2027 tasks to them.
Sources for this page
- S-URC07-RULES-L1University Rover Challenge 2007, Level 1 Requirements and GuidelinesPrint copy
- S-URC15-RULESUniversity Rover Challenge 2015 – Requirements and GuidelinesOriginal
- S-URC19-RULESUniversity Rover Challenge 2019 – Requirements and GuidelinesOriginal
- S-URC27-RULESUniversity Rover Challenge 2027 – Requirements and GuidelinesOriginal Archived copy
- S-CENSUSURC team census, master index (68 teams, 187 team-year rows, tiers, documentation test)Print copy
- S-MIST-VURC2021"Virtual URC 2021: MIST Mongol Barota, Session 1" on the official University Rover Challenge channel (1:20:42, uploaded 2021); full judged run: weigh-in 42.1 kg, box check 1.047 m, Equipment Servicing 100/100, Autonomous Navigation failure + manual intervention; auto-caption transcript retrieved with yt-dlp,write-auto-subOriginal
- S-MONASH-GH-NOVAMonashNovaRover/nova, "The Monash Nova Rover mono-repo" (Apache-2.0; default branch main; 2,389 files; last push 2026-10-23)Original
- S-URC-RESULTSURC official scores 2022–2026, compiled CSVPrint copy