Delivery mission

Delivery is the mission where time, terrain and a gate interact. A 5 kg object, smaller than 40 cm on each side, travels up to a kilometre over sand, gravel, boulder fields, vertical drops and steep loose slopes, with line of sight lost for more than half of the course. The gate, not the terrain, is what breaks seasons.

What the mission physically demands

What the best teams did

Delivery is the most volatile mission in the record: mean 23.6, median 15.0, 15 % zeros and only 4 % of scores at 80 or above. The distribution is bimodal rather than graded, because a slow start produces 0–20 and a competent run produces 50–80.

Derived from the official mission column in the five result sheets S-URC22-SCORES S-URC23-SCORES S-URC24-SCORES S-URC25-SCORES S-URC26-SCORES. The 2023 cluster at exactly 15 is the Stage-1 gate: one or two cheap tasks banked, then a time-out.

Official Delivery column, from the five result sheets S-URC22-SCORES S-URC23-SCORES S-URC24-SCORES S-URC25-SCORES S-URC26-SCORES; BRACU’s first recorded Delivery entry is 2023.

The clearest transferable lesson from the best Delivery runs is time management. West Virginia’s 2023 search discipline, which covered the search area from an overhead map and kept a detection window open to the last 90 seconds, and Missouri S&T’s 2026 run both came from a reliable wrist camera and a rehearsed order of tasks, not from unusual hardware S-WVU-SAR2023 S-MST-SITE-ATHENA.

Does 2027 invalidate it

Mostly no, with one planning caveat.

• Removed: the marked-path task, “follow a marked path that requires precise maneuvering over a designated terrain feature”, is absent in 2027 S-URC26-RULES S-URC27-RULES §1.c.iii §1.c.iii. That removes one path-following family. It does not reduce the terrain requirement, because reaching the objects still means crossing the same terrain list.
• Unchanged: the object envelope, the 5 kg mass, the 1 km range, the out-of-sight requirement, the approximate GNSS locations, scoring on the correct object at the correct location with partial credit, the drone option and the mini-rover prohibition S-URC27-RULES §1.c.
• Not yet published: the stage durations, the Stage-1 minimum and the task list, all of which the rulebook defers to a document published before the competition S-URC27-RULES §1.c.i. A team training to the 2026 timing of 35 minutes and 20 minutes with a 40-point gate may be training to the wrong clock S-URC26-DM as a 2026 reference. The capability transfers; the rehearsal timings must be set when the task list lands.

Verdict: the approach carries forward with a raised planning risk. The design implication is not a different rover but a rehearsed gate, run as a sequence of bankable tasks with an abandon rule, and re-timed once the 2027 task list is published.

Which subsystem options serve it

Minimum viable versus stretch

• The minimum that scores: reach the course and complete one Stage-1 task, such as reading a sign, opening a lid, pushing a button or moving a small object. Teleoperation is legal.
• The minimum that passes a gate: two or three of those banked in the first third of Stage 1, which needs a known task order. The mitigation is to rehearse a generic fast opening, then resequence when the 2027 list publishes.
• The stretch: every task, with the correct object at the correct location, including a 5 kg load over rock, a large-area search and a later task beyond radio line of sight. On the 2026 task set that was worth 100 to one team.

Risks to retire early

What is not published

• The 2027 stage durations and the Stage-1 minimum, so a gate rehearsal cannot yet be timed.
• The 2027 task list, so the points per minute of each task cannot be ranked.
• The 2027 placement tolerance.
• Any numeric slope or step limit for the course, which means the obstacle set has to be chosen and measured locally.

Further reading

• Mobility sizes the speed and the terrain capability this mission needs.
• Arm and end-effectors covers the jaw, the retention problem and the lift.
• Delivery, payload handling and drones is the synthesis for the drone option, which has no dedicated study behind it.
• Missouri S&T, Monash, West Virginia and BRACU carry the Delivery evidence.
• What 2027 invalidates places the removed marked-path task beside the other changes.