SC Robotics (Saddleback College / Irvine Valley College)

SC Robotics is the only community-college programme in the field census, and it has the most legible public engineering trail in this tier. Its results climbed from 25^th to 20^th to 17^th to 17^th across four seasons, a z-score gain of 1.27 that is one of the largest measured improvements in the field. Each season added a working mission, and the repositories record how. In 2026 the team registered and published a review film, then recorded no finals result, which is the one year its public record stops being measurable.

Identity and results

The rows reproduce the published results S-URC22-SCORES S-URC23-SCORES S-URC24-SCORES S-URC25-SCORES. No award is documented in any season. The team registers under Saddleback College, with Irvine Valley College named as a partner in 2025 and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University added in the 2024 team list S-URC24-TEAMS S-URC25-TEAMS.

Rover generations

2022: a one-mission rover. Science scored 63 and the other three missions scored zero. A review score of 85.39 on a rover that could analyse a sample but not move one is a normal first finals, and the repositories from that season are still public S-URC22-SCORES.

2023: Equipment Servicing appears. Equipment Servicing reached 41 out of nothing while Delivery stayed at 10 and autonomy at zero. That is the first sign of a working arm S-URC23-SCORES.

2024: Delivery. Delivery reached 51, the best mechanical score in the team’s record, with Equipment Servicing at 34 and autonomy still at zero. Three of four missions worked S-URC24-SCORES.

2025: Autonomy, at a price. Autonomy scored 42 for the first time, but Delivery fell from 51 to 35 and Equipment Servicing from 34 to 20. It is the first complete mission set in the record and the clearest example in this tier of a season trading one mission for another S-URC25-SCORES.

2026: registered, not measured. The team is on the official team list and its site carries a 2026 review film, but there is no row in the 2026 score sheet. Why is not public S-URC26-TEAMS S-SCR-YT.

Subsystems

Arm. The team describes the arm’s work as button pushing, keyboard typing, joystick manipulation, switch flipping and heavy object carrying. Degrees of freedom, reach and actuator family are not published, so the mission scores are the evidence: Equipment Servicing went 0 to 41 to 34 to 20, and Delivery 0 to 10 to 51 to 35 S-SCR-SITE S-URC25-SCORES.

Drive and chassis. The site describes robust wheels and suspension for rocks, slopes and sand, a chassis that carries the power distribution and protection circuits, the electronics housings and the wireless link to the base station. Wheel count, suspension type, motor model and mass are not published S-SCR-SITE.

Science. The repositories include a board for a brush motor and an ultraviolet light in a lowering platform, which is consistent with ultraviolet fluorescence life detection. The team does not state the assay, and the sensor behind the light is not named, so the mechanism should be read as an inference from the board description S-SCR-GH.

Software. ROS 2 has been the middleware since at least 2022: drive, video and science packages from the 2022 and 2023 seasons all describe ROS 2 messaging. Motor control uses an open-source driver for ODrive controllers, and perception was built on a GPU-accelerated ROS workspace. A Unity simulation supported arm and rover planning. The embedded side is unusual: a cluster of Rust firmware repositories from 2021 and 2022, including a serialisation crate, alongside later C firmware for an STM32 board S-SCR-GH.

Repository practice. The organisation holds 35 public repositories, organised as one per subsystem per season. The board repositories state their function in the name and the description: a hard and soft stop board, a MOSFET driver board with a microcontroller, and a driver board for the brush motor and ultraviolet light. Software recruiting uses a small application project that candidates must complete to be considered for the programming sub-team S-SCR-GH.

Mission performance

The four scored seasons form a staircase. 2022 is a science-only rover, 2023 adds Equipment Servicing, 2024 adds Delivery, and 2025 adds Autonomy. The total rises every year, from 148.39 to 262.55, and the rank rises from 25^th to 17^th before flattening S-URC22-SCORES S-URC25-SCORES.

The flattening is the interesting part. In 2025 the fourth mission arrived but two existing missions lost points, so the rank stayed at 17^th while the total improved by 15 points. A team that adds capability without adding integration capacity is moving points around inside a fixed budget S-URC24-SCORES S-URC25-SCORES.

The public record also includes an unusual outreach event: the rover appeared at a maker fair and was interviewed on a popular engineering channel, which the team’s own site embeds. For a community-college programme, that is an unusual level of public attention S-SCR-SITE.

Lessons for a first build

• Write the repository as if the team will be replaced. At a two-year institution it will be. One package per subsystem per season lets the next group diff two years of the same subsystem in minutes.
• Name a board by what it does. A hard and soft stop board, a motor driver board and a lamp driver board are findable a year later; revision numbers are not.
• Add one mission a year. The staircase from one working mission to four is the most convincing improvement curve in this tier, and it came from sequencing rather than from a single redesign.
• Expect new capability to cost old capability. The 2025 season added autonomy by giving back points in Delivery and Equipment Servicing. Budget for the integration work, not only the new feature.
• Turn recruitment into a small technical gate. A short application project filters for people who can finish something, which matters more than prior experience in a team that must replace members quickly.

What remains uncertain

Why 2026 has no finals result despite a registration and a published review film is not public. The rover has no public name; “Valkyrie” appears only inside repository names and is not asserted here. Mass, wheel count, suspension type, arm geometry, radios and compute are all unpublished, and the review films are the remaining route to them. Whether the Irvine Valley College and Embry-Riddle members are a formal partnership or a year-by-year roster is not stated. What the lowering platform carries beyond the ultraviolet light is not published.

Team sources

• saddlebackcollegerobotics.com, the team site with the five subsystem scopes.
• SaddlebackCollegeRobotics on GitHub, the season and board repositories.
• Current motor-control package, the active software repository.
• 2026 review film, the most recent public review of the rover.