Ad Astra (Sairam Institutions)

Ad Astra has one URC finals appearance on record: 33^rd of 35 in 2025, with Science at 70 and the two manipulation missions at 4 and 0. The team publishes a subsystem page that describes a 6-DOF arm with cycloidal drives, a carousel drill and an RTK-GNSS autonomy stack. In the same period it placed second at the Indian Rover Challenge and second at ISRO’s IRoC. The gap between that published architecture and the scored result is the most useful thing this team shows a first-time builder.

Identity and results

Ad Astra is the rover team of Sri Sairam Institutions in Chennai, built around Sri Sairam Engineering College. It appears in two URC seasons. The 2024 entry ended at the System Acceptance Review with 84.60 and no finals result; the 2025 entry produced the team’s only scored finals S-URC24-SCORES S-URC25-SCORES. The team is not on the 2026 team list and has no row in the 2026 score sheet S-URC26-TEAMS S-URC26-SCORES. Tier C is the census label for a record of that length; the tier rule is defined on the census page.

The 2025 rover is named Nikola S-ADASTRA-ERC25. The team site lists 89 members and the 2025 European Rover Challenge registration lists 77, so the programme is large by Tier C standards S-ADASTRA-SITE S-ADASTRA-ERC25.

The total is the exact sum of its five components. The shape is the finding: a rover that can drive a course and run a science package, and that leaves 196 of the 200 points available in the two manipulation missions unclaimed.

The rover and its subsystems

The team publishes a subsystem page with component-level decisions. It is self-reported and qualitative, with no numbers, dates or test results, so it should be read as the team’s statement of intent rather than as a measured specification S-ADASTRA-SUBSYSTEMS.

Mobility. A modified rocker-bogie suspension on a structure described as designed for all-terrain stability and slope traversal, with topology optimisation in SolidWorks and Ansys S-ADASTRA-SUBSYSTEMS. Wheel count, wheel diameter, motors, mass and top speed are not published.

Arm and end-effectors. A 6-DOF arm with cycloidal drives, and a carousel-style sample handling mechanism listed as “science payload carousel drilling” S-ADASTRA-SUBSYSTEMS. Reach, payload and gripper type are not published. This is the best-specified subsystem on the rover and the one that scored 0 in 2025.

Science. The 2025 Science score of 70 was the team’s best mission. No instrument, assay or detection limit is published, and the sample-acquisition method described on the site (suction) belongs to the IRC task set, not to the URC rover S-ADASTRA-SITE.

Electronics and software. Custom mixed-signal boards in Altium, CAN and I²C networks, a redundant battery management system, and micro-ROS bridges for actuator control. Above that, an RTK-GNSS navigation loop, 3D LiDAR and RealSense visual SLAM, YOLO perception and ArUco gate traversal on ROS 2 Galactic and Humble S-ADASTRA-SUBSYSTEMS. Every element named there is the element the autonomy mission rewards, and the scored result was 14 S-URC25-SCORES.

Mission performance

2024, the review year. A review score of 84.60 with no finals result S-URC24-SCORES. That is the fourth-lowest review score in the 2024 sheet and still a passing one.

2025, the finals. Science 70, Autonomy 14, Delivery 4, Equipment Servicing 0 S-URC25-SCORES. The two manipulation missions contributed 4 points between them. For a team that publishes a 6-DOF arm and a carousel, that is an execution gap rather than a design gap.

2026, absent. No team-list entry and no score row S-URC26-TEAMS S-URC26-SCORES. The same window produced an IRC 2026 runner-up place and an ISRO IRoC 2024 runner-up place, both reported by the team S-ADASTRA-SITE. Whether the team has moved permanently toward the Indian competitions or skipped one URC cycle is not stated in any source.

Lessons for a first build

• Benchmark against the URC mission set, not against another competition’s. IRC’s task list is autonomous traversal, instrument deployment, astrobiological exploration and extreme retrieval. It has no Equipment Servicing task scored the way URC scores one, which is consistent with a team that wins at IRC and scores 0 at servicing.
• A checklist of components is not a tested stack. RTK-GNSS, visual SLAM, YOLO and ArUco appear on the page as features S-ADASTRA-SUBSYSTEMS; the scored autonomy result was 14 S-URC25-SCORES. A first build should carry one measured autonomy demonstration rather than five named frameworks.
• Rehearse the arm sequence to a clock. Delivery and Equipment Servicing are timed sequences with entry-level tasks. A zero means the entry-level task was not completed, which is usually a rehearsal and time-budget problem, not a hardware problem.
• Cycloidal joints are a pattern, not a coincidence. Ad Astra, Binghamton and KARURA all describe custom cycloidal reducers at the arm joints, which is worth reading as three independent answers to the same torque and backlash requirement.
• Read a team’s milestone list with the score sheet open. The site records the qualification and not the 33^rd place S-ADASTRA-SITE; the score sheet records the 33^rd place S-URC25-SCORES.

What remains uncertain

Why Equipment Servicing scored 0 in the only finals, given the published 6-DOF arm, is not documented. The rover mass, dimensions, wheel diameter, drive motors, battery and radios are all unpublished, and the subsystem page gives no measurement of anything. Whether the team travelled to the 2024 finals is unknown; only the SAR score is recorded. Whether the IRC 2026 runner-up machine is the same platform as Nikola is not stated. The GitHub organisation holds three small ROS packages last updated in 2022 and nothing for the 2025 rover S-ADASTRA-GH.

Team sources

• teamadastra.in, the team site, with the competition record and milestone list.
• Subsystems page, the component-level description quoted above.
• ERC 2025 profile, the registration naming Nikola and the 77-member team.
• adastra-rover on GitHub, three packages last updated in 2022.
• University Rover Challenge, the competition whose official score sheets carry the results above.