PCz Rover Team (Czestochowa University of Technology)

PCz won the University Rover Challenge in 2018 with Modernity II and 374.2 points, the strongest single-season result any Polish team has posted. Six seasons later it finished 11^th, and since 2023 it has registered for the finals without appearing in a single score sheet. The record is therefore two programmes in one file: a championship-era team that won by being excellent at the manipulative missions, and a current team whose capability is not measurable from public evidence.

Identity and results

The early rows are from the archived official tables, and the 2022 to 2023 rows from the modern score sheets. The 2016 season ran in two brackets, so its total is not comparable with the Ares bracket S-URC-HISTRESULTS S-URC22-SCORES S-URC23-SCORES.

| Year | Rover | Total | Rank | SAR | Science | Delivery | Equipment | Autonomy | |---|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:| | 2014 | Infinity I | 195 | 10 | Not scored | 87 | 5 | 10 | 10 | | 2015 | Infinity III | 309 | 6 | Not scored | 90 | 21 | 100 | 19.2 | | 2016 | Infinity III | 280 | 10 | Not scored | 100 | 80 | 99 | 90 | | 2017 | Modernity I | 330.4 | 3 | 83.6 | 91 | 28.8 | 57 | 70 | | 2018 | Modernity II | 374.2 | 1 | 89.55 | 95.65 | 100 | 59 | 30 | | 2019 | Modernity II+ | 312.49 | 4 | 91.49 | 89 | 80 | 42 | 10 | | 2022 | Modernity III | 240.18 | 12 | 92.18 | 61 | 45 | 42 | 0 | | 2023 | Modernity III | 267.83 | 11 | 86.72 | 98.31 | 15 | 25.8 | 42 |

Before 2017 the competition used a five-task set, so those mission columns are positional: Science holds sample return, Delivery holds astronaut assistance, Equipment holds equipment servicing and Autonomy holds terrain. The presentation score is not shown in the review column, which is why those rows do not sum to the printed total, and the 2016 bracket used a different scale. What does transfer is the shape: equipment scores of 100 and 99 in 2015 and 2016, then Delivery 100 in 2018. This was a team that won by manipulating objects S-URC-HISTRESULTS.

The 2024 to 2026 gap

Three consecutive registrations produce no finals result. The record cannot distinguish a rejected review, a withdrawal, or a team that travelled and did not record a mission score. The team’s own channel carries no review film for 2023, 2024 or 2025, and the 2026 upload returns an unavailable message. The 2026 rover, Beaver, is described on the team site as due at the Anatolian Rover Challenge rather than at URC S-PCZ-YT S-PCZ-SAR2026 S-PCZ-SITE.

Rover generations

2014 to 2016: the Infinity series. Infinity I, Infinity II and Infinity III moved the team from 10^th to 6^th and produced the first 100 in Equipment Servicing. The pattern that produced the championship was already visible: excellent at the manipulative task, weak at driving S-PCZ-SITE S-URC-HISTRESULTS.

2017 to 2019: Modernity. Modernity I took third place in 2017, Modernity II won in 2018, and Modernity II+ finished fourth in 2019. In 2018 every mission except autonomy scored at least 59 S-URC-HISTRESULTS.

2020 to 2023: Modernity III. The same rover generation carried the team through four seasons. Science held at 61 and then 98.31, the review stayed above 86, but Delivery fell from 45 to 15 and Equipment from 42 to 25.8. Autonomy went from 0 to 42 on the same platform, which indicates a software effort rather than a hardware change S-URC22-SCORES S-URC23-SCORES.

2026: Beaver. A new rover with no published result. The site describes it in general terms, with no mass, dimension or actuator figure, and the competition named is the Anatolian Rover Challenge S-PCZ-SITE.

Subsystems

Mobility. Six wheels on a rocker-bogie with a differential link, wide lugged tyres on anodised hubs, and a white central equipment box. Wheel diameter, motor model, gearbox and mass are not published. The suspension geometry is conventional for the field, which makes the Delivery score of 15 in 2023 a manipulation or operations failure rather than a mobility one S-PCZ-SAR2022.

Arm and end-effector. A two-finger parallel gripper with machined aluminium jaw plates and curved inner pads, on a wrist with an exposed spur-gear drive. In the film the gripper holds a slender cylindrical object, which is the servicing and sampling work the team has historically done well. Degrees of freedom, reach and actuator family are not published S-PCZ-SAR2022.

Science. The 2023 Science score of 98.31 is the only hard evidence that the payload worked, and it is close to the top of that field. No instrument is visible in the captured frames and no text names one, so the payload should be read from the score rather than from a description S-URC23-SCORES.

Autonomy. The scores tell the story: 70 in 2017, 30 in 2018, 10 in 2019, 0 in 2022 and 42 in 2023. The 0 to 42 swing on one rover generation is the clearest argument in this dossier that autonomy capability lives with the people who write it, not with the platform S-URC-HISTRESULTS S-URC23-SCORES.

Mission performance

The championship year is the cleanest evidence in the archive that a team can win without strong autonomy. In 2018 PCz scored 100 in Delivery, 59 in Equipment Servicing, 95.65 in Science and 30 in Autonomy, and finished first of 36 S-URC-HISTRESULTS.

The modern seasons invert the balance. In 2022 Science scored 61 and autonomy 0; in 2023 Science scored 98.31 while Delivery fell to 15 and Equipment to 25.8. The rank barely moved, 12^th to 11^th, which is why a rank series alone hides a change of this size. A rover carried by one near-perfect mission is not the same rover as one carried by four adequate ones S-URC22-SCORES S-URC23-SCORES.

Lessons for a first build

• A manipulative mission can carry a season. The 2018 title came from Delivery at 100 and Equipment at 59, not from autonomy. A first build that cannot yet write a planner can still compete if the arm and the end-effector are reliable.
• Name the generations and keep the pages. Eight named rovers with dates and results give a new member a starting point and an outside team a narrative. It costs a web page.
• A capability that worked last year is not owned. PCz scored 100 in Delivery in 2018 and 15 in 2023. The mission did not change; the people, the arm and the practice did.
• Autonomy needs a written home. The 70, 30, 10, 0 and 42 sequence on the same platform is what happens when the knowledge lives in a graduating member. Put the assumptions and the launch procedure in the repository.
• A registration is not a season. Three years of registration with no score row is worse for a dossier than three years of a bad score, because nothing can be learned from it.

What remains uncertain

Why no finals result was recorded in 2024, 2025 or 2026 is not public, and whether a review was submitted and accepted in those years cannot be established. Mass, wheel diameter, motors, gearbox, battery, radios and arm degrees of freedom are all unpublished. Whether Beaver is a new architecture or a Modernity III evolution is not stated. The 2016 two-bracket total should not be compared with the Ares bracket.

Team sources

• rover.pcz.pl/en, the team site with the rover lineage and results.
• YouTube channel, review films from 2018 to 2026.
• 2022 review film, the source of the frames on this page.
• 2018 review film, the championship year.