Binghamton University Rover Team (SUNY Binghamton)

Binghamton’s review record is its strongest asset: 91.85, 95.97 and 90.69 across three finals. Across the same twelve mission attempts the rover recorded four zeros. The two records tell different stories, and together they put a number on what a good review is worth on its own.

Identity and results

The Binghamton University Rover Team is a student team at the Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science, about 50 students across six subteams: drive, human–robot environment interaction, environmental analysis, electrical, software and firmware S-BING-SITE. The team reached the finals in 2023, 2024 and 2026 and skipped 2025. Its own account of the three placements matches the score sheets exactly S-BING-SITE S-URC23-SCORES S-URC24-SCORES S-URC26-SCORES. Tier C is the census label for that record; the tier rule is defined on the census page.

The 2024 rover is named Endurance S-BING-CUBEMARS. No rover name is published for 2023 or 2026.

The trajectory is flat with one gap: 23^rd, then 20^th, then 25^th, on a field that grew from 31 to 36 scored teams. The 2024 arithmetic closes at 224.47, the team’s best total.

The rover and its subsystems

Documentation is unusually good for the band: a university page with a named subteam structure and two independent manufacturer case studies. There is still no design report and no public code.

Mobility. Six-wheel drive. CubeMars motors drove the 2024 rover, described by the supplier as the basis of the six-wheel drive system, with the chassis required to cross terrain without bottoming out S-BING-CUBEMARS. Chassis material, suspension type, wheel diameter, gear ratios and mass are not published.

Arm and end-effectors. A 6-DOF manipulator with inverse-kinematics control, custom cycloidal gearboxes in each joint, one RLS AksIM-2 (049) absolute magnetic encoder per joint and on-board stepper controllers S-BING-RLS. The stated reason for absolute feedback is the right one for a timed competition: inverse kinematics needs reliable real-time joint angles, and absolute encoders remove homing time from the start of a run. Reach, mass, gripper type and joint torque are not published.

Science. The university page names the capability, drilling, sampling and analysis in the search for life, but no instrument or assay S-BING-SITE. The scores are the evidence: 53.94, then 86, then 73.

Delivery. No description of the capture or carry mechanism exists in any source. Delivery scored 8.5, 30 and 0.

Organisation. The subteam split is worth copying on its own. A dedicated human–robot environment interaction subteam owns manipulation and the operator interface, separate from drive and from software, which is an organisational answer to Equipment Servicing rather than an engineering one S-BING-SITE.

Mission performance

2023, 23^rd of 31. Science 53.94 and Equipment 15 carried the total; Delivery 8.5 and Autonomy 0 did not S-URC23-SCORES. The review score of 91.85 was ninth of the 37 review scores in the 2023 sheet.

2024, 20^th of 34. Science rose to 86 and Delivery to 30 while Equipment slipped to 12.5 and Autonomy stayed at zero S-URC24-SCORES. Of the 55-point gain, 32 came from science and 21.5 from delivery. The review score of 95.97 was the third-highest in the 2024 field.

2025, absent. No score row and no team-list entry S-URC25-SCORES S-URC25-TEAMS. The team’s own finals list skips the year S-BING-SITE. Whether that was a withdrawal, a non-qualification or a skipped cycle is not stated.

2026, 25^th of 36. The pattern inverted. Autonomy scored for the first time, 30, while Delivery and Equipment Servicing both went to 0 S-URC26-SCORES. Losing two of the four mission families in one season, in the year the rover finally navigated, is the clearest illustration of the coverage problem on this page.

Lessons for a first build

• Review quality and mission reliability are separate budgets. The SAR stayed between 90.69 and 95.97 across three years; the mission set never had all four families working at once. A first build should plan the review as a task with its own owner and rehearse the missions as a different task with a different owner.
• Absolute encoders on every joint remove homing from the clock. Binghamton chose them for exactly that reason S-BING-RLS. It is a cheap component-level decision that transfers directly.
• Component quality is not mission readiness. An arm with cycloidal gearboxes, absolute encoders and inverse kinematics scored 0 in Equipment Servicing in 2026. The gap is the rehearsed time budget for the task sequence.
• A dedicated manipulation subteam is an organisational control. Separating human–robot environment interaction from drive and software gives Equipment Servicing a standing owner instead of a shared one.
• Group the missions by what they need, not by subsystem. The zeros cluster: 2023 and 2024 in autonomy, 2026 in delivery and servicing. The team improved one family at a time and paid for it in another.

What remains uncertain

The 2025 absence is unexplained in every source reached. The 2026 double zero is also unexplained: a single shared failure, such as an arm bus or the operator station, would explain both missions, but nothing documents one. Rover mass, wheel diameter, suspension type, battery, radios and on-board computer are unpublished. Whether the 2024 Endurance and the 2026 rover are the same platform is unknown, since the name appears in one source only. No SAR video, design report or public code archive was found, so the mission narrative rests on the score sheets and the two supplier case studies.

Team sources

• Binghamton rover team page, the subteam structure and the finals record.
• RLS case study, “Driving Dexterity”, the 6-DOF arm, the AksIM-2 encoders and the cycloidal gearboxes.
• CubeMars case study, the six-wheel drive and the 2024 rover Endurance.
• University Rover Challenge, the competition whose official score sheets carry the results above.