Ceres (Universidad de los Andes)

Ceres reached the 2025 finals in its first URC season and finished 21^st of 35 with every one of the four missions scoring. Its distinguishing feature is vertical integration: the team designed and built its own wheel and arm motors, iterated through at least 20 versions, and manufactured the rover almost entirely inside its own university laboratories. It has not returned to URC since, so the record is a single season and the rating that follows from it is about sample size rather than capability.

Identity and results

Ceres is a Universidad de los Andes programme in Bogotá, rooted in the ROBOCOL student group and organised around a project the faculty pages call Venture S-CERES-FACULTY-PAGE. Thirteen undergraduates travelled to Utah in 2025: four in electronic engineering, four in mechanical engineering, two in geosciences, and one each in systems engineering, design and architecture, with three more contributing before the trip S-CERES-ARQDIS. The team describes itself as operating like a small company, with visual identity, sponsorship, logistics and a visual interface all in scope S-CERES-UNIANDES-NEWS. Tier C is the census label for a one-season record; the tier rule is defined on the census page.

The total is the exact sum of its components. The team reports the same placement as 21^st in the world and the best Latin American result of the 2025 competition S-CERES-ARQDIS. The article also describes a field of 114 registered teams, which is the registration count rather than the 35 teams that recorded finals scores.

The rover and its subsystems

There is no design report, no public code archive and no SAR film that was reachable, so the rover description rests on two university articles and one faculty page.

Mobility. A compact, light and stiff chassis, a stable rocker suspension with adjustable chassis height, and light wheels made for sandy desert terrain S-CERES-ARQDIS. Early prototypes were 3D printed and gave way to machined aluminium components as the design matured S-CERES-UNIANDES-NEWS. Wheel diameter, travel, mass and top speed are unpublished.

Drive and arm motors. The wheels and the arm are driven by motors designed and manufactured by the students as part of a research line inside the programme, and those motors went through at least 20 versions S-CERES-ARQDIS S-CERES-UNIANDES-NEWS S-CERES-FACULTY-PAGE. This is the most unusual engineering fact about the team. Most teams buy a motor controller and a motor and spend their time on integration; Ceres spent part of its first season on the motor itself.

Arm and end-effectors. A large, mobile robotic arm with a pinch-type gripper able to manipulate objects precisely S-CERES-ARQDIS. Degrees of freedom, reach and payload are unpublished, and the joint drives are team-built.

Science. No instrument or assay is named. The geosciences students joined the task of analysing simulated terrain for conditions that support life S-CERES-UNIANDES-NEWS. The evidence that the payload worked is the score of 81.

Delivery and autonomy. Delivery 17.6, Equipment Servicing 34.5 and Autonomy 14 are partial credit in all three S-URC25-SCORES. Radios, battery, on-board computer and the autonomy stack are unpublished.

Bio-design. The team reports a detachable shell and an interest in recycled materials and biomaterials under bio-design criteria S-CERES-ARQDIS. That is a design direction, not a measured property.

Mission performance

2025, 21^st of 35. Science 81 and SAR 91.06 did most of the work, Equipment Servicing 34.5 was respectable, and Delivery 17.6 and Autonomy 14 were partial S-URC25-SCORES. For a first finals, the headline is that nothing blanked.

2026, no entry. No team-list entry and no score row S-URC26-TEAMS S-URC26-SCORES. Why a team that placed 21^st on debut did not return is not stated in any source reached.

Lessons for a first build

• Finish all four missions at a partial level before perfecting one. 81, 17.6, 34.5 and 14 is a balanced debut with no zeros, and a balanced set of mid-field scores is what a first season can realistically target.
• Vertically integrated motors are a season-long commitment. Twenty versions of a motor is a research programme, and it consumed part of a first season. A team with one season should decide deliberately whether building its own actuator is the best use of that time.
• An adjustable-height rocker is a cheap articulation substitute. Changing chassis height gains clearance on rocks and stability on slopes without adding a joint or an actuator.
• A small, cross-disciplinary travelling team can work. Thirteen undergraduates covering mechanical, electronic, geoscience, systems, design and architecture is a different shape from the usual large single-discipline team.
• Publish something technical while the season is live. The only durable public descriptions of this rover come from university news. A two-page payload note would have answered the question the record cannot.

What remains uncertain

Why the team did not enter URC 2026 after a 21^st-place debut is unknown. The rover mass, dimensions, wheel size, suspension travel, battery, radios and on-board computer are all unpublished, and the science instrument behind a score of 81 is unnamed. Whether Ceres is a rename of Robocol, the other Universidad de los Andes team, is unresolved: Robocol was still listed separately in 2024, Ceres appears from 2025, and two of the Ceres leads came from ROBOCOL S-CERES-UNIANDES-NEWS. The census keeps the two teams apart, and so does this page.

Team sources

• Universidad de los Andes news, “Un vehículo robótico capaz de cumplir misiones espaciales”, the build method and the motor iterations.
• Facultad de Arquitectura y Diseño, “Estudiantes Uniandes: University Rover Challenge 2025”, the full team list and the rover description.
• Department page, “Ceres”, the project description and team-built motors.
• @ceres.robotics on Instagram, the only channel URC lists for the team.
• University Rover Challenge, the competition whose official score sheets carry the results above.