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The field·Team dossier

UBC Rover (University of British Columbia)

UBC scored 92.64 on the 2025 System Acceptance Review, a strong written review, and recorded no finals result: the 2025 row is a SAR-only row in the official sheet. The team has registered for the 2024, 2025 and 2026 seasons and published a review film in each, with no mission score in any year. Its public engineering record is a polished site and a GitHub account with one repository, named deprecated.

CCensus tierNo finals result2022–2026S-CENSUS
CanadaCountryVancouver, British ColumbiaS-UBC-SITE
92.64Best SAR score2025, with no finals result2025S-URC25-SCORES
0Finals appearancesRegistered 2024–20262024–2026S-URC26-TEAMS

What this team shows

  • A 92.64 SAR is a real result and not a capability; the review gates entry, it does not rank a rover.
  • Zero finals appearances and zero mission scores in the whole record.
  • The public engineering record is one repository named deprecated.
  • The site publishes two metrics with no method: 749 components and a 780 m effective operational radius.

Identity and results

The team appears in the 2024, 2025 and 2026 URC team lists. Only the 2025 score sheet carries a UBC row, and that row has a SAR score and no mission scores S-URC24-TEAMS S-URC25-TEAMS S-URC26-TEAMS S-URC25-SCORES. Tier C is the census label for a team with no finals result in the window; the tier rule is defined on the census page.

Year Rover SAR Finals result Evidence
2024 not published no score-sheet row Registered, with a review film published S-URC24-SCORES S-UBC-YT
2025 not published 92.64 SAR only; no mission scores and no rank S-URC25-SCORES
2026 not published no score-sheet row Registered, with a review film published S-URC26-SCORES S-UBC-YT

For scale, seven finals teams scored above 92.64 on the 2025 SAR, and the top score was 97.27 S-URC25-SCORES. A strong written review did not convert into a field result. No UBC Rover row appears in the archived 2013–2019 tables, so the finals record is empty in every year the record covers S-URC-HISTRESULTS.

Rover generations

No named generation. No rover name appears on the site or in any source reached. The team has published three review films, for 2024, 2025 and 2026, with durations of 5:03, 5:00 and 4:09 S-UBC-YT.

One technical short. “Teleoperating 6-Axis Robotic Arm”, a 1:19 video, is the only public statement about a specific subsystem: the arm has six axes S-UBC-YT.

The “18 years active” claim. The site states it, and no founding date beside it appears anywhere else in the record, so it is recorded as the team’s own claim rather than a verified start year S-UBC-SITE.

Subsystems

Mobility. No chassis, suspension, wheel or motor detail is published.

Arm and end-effectors. Six axes, from the title of a technical short S-UBC-YT. Whether the end effector is swappable, as the site’s design intent states, is not shown S-UBC-SITE.

Science. No instrument, assay or sample path is published.

Autonomy. The site describes “advanced semi-autonomous rovers” and “machine-learning-driven navigation” S-UBC-SITE. No stack, sensor or scored run is published.

Power, communications and compute. Not published. The site gives a 780 m “effective operational radius” without saying what it measures S-UBC-SITE.

Programme. Seven subteams (Chassis, Arm, Software, Electrical, Rover Lab, Science and Business) and 64 students, both the team’s own figures S-UBC-SITE. The scope of Rover Lab is not stated.

Mission performance

There is no mission performance to describe.

2024. Registered and published a 5:03 review film; no score-sheet row S-URC24-SCORES S-UBC-YT.

2025. SAR 92.64, recorded as a SAR-only row: a written review that qualified the team but produced no mission score and no rank S-URC25-SCORES. Why there was no field result is not stated in the public record.

2026. Registered and published a 4:09 review film; no score-sheet row S-URC26-SCORES S-UBC-YT.

The missing finals result cannot be separated from public data. Withdrawal, a travel failure and a mission score missing from the sheet all fit, and the census warns against assuming any one of them.

Lessons for a first build

  • The review gates; it does not rank. A 92.64 written review is strong and earns no mission point. The field result is a separate deliverable, with its own schedule and its own rehearsals.
  • Define every published metric. A 780 m operational radius is useful only with the quantity named: radio range, teleoperation range or driving radius. If it is a radio figure, it has to be tested against the delivery mission’s operating distance, which the 2024 and 2025 rules put at 1 km beyond visual line of sight S-UWRT-REPORT2025.
  • State the counting rule for a part count. 749 components is the kind of number a mass and complexity model wants; whether it counts fasteners, unique part numbers or purchased items changes what it means S-UBC-SITE.
  • A repository named deprecated is a warning. A public account with one unusable repository is indistinguishable, from outside, from no account at all S-UBC-GH.
  • Swappable end effectors are mainstream. The strongest manipulator teams work the same way; the difference is evidence of execution, which this record does not have.

What remains uncertain

What happened in 2025 between a 92.64 SAR and no finals result is not stated. What the 780 m operational radius measures, and whether it meets the delivery mission’s operating distance, is not defined. The scope of Rover Lab as a subteam is unpublished. Mass, wheels, arm, science, power, communications and compute are unpublished; only the six-axis arm is public. Whether the 2024 and 2026 review films were submitted as the team’s review, and whether the “18 years active” claim can be corroborated, are also open.

Team sources

Sources for this page

  1. S-URC24-TEAMSURC2024 Team ListURC, 2024.Original
  2. S-URC25-TEAMSURC2025 Team ListURC, 2025.Original
  3. S-URC26-TEAMSURC2026 Team ListURC, 2026.Original Archived copy
  4. S-URC25-SCORESURC2025 Official ScoresURC, 2025-06.Original
  5. S-URC24-SCORESURC2024 Official ScoresURC, 2024-06.Original
  6. S-UBC-YTUBC Rover YouTube channel, "UBC Rover – University Rover Challenge SAR 2026" (4:09), "UBC Rover2024 University Rover Challenge SAR" (5:03), "Teleoperating 6-Axis Robotic Arm" (1:19).Print copy
  7. S-URC26-SCORESURC2026 Official ScoresURC, 2026-05/06.Original Archived copy
  8. S-URC-HISTRESULTSURC results database: derived 2022–2026 statistics (§4–§5) and archived official results 2013–2019 (§7)Compiled from official URC results, 2026.Print copy
  9. S-UBC-SITEUBC Rover site, 64 students, 7 subteams (Chassis, Arm, Software, Electrical, Rover Lab, Science, Business), "18 years active", "780 m effective operational radius", "749 components in the rover", URC + CIRC, "machine-learning-driven navigation", "swappable end-effectors"UBC Rover / University of British Columbia, 2026.Original
  10. S-UWRT-REPORT2025"UW Robotics URC 2025 Technical report", public Confluence page. Contains: three season objectives; named leads; the SAR post-mortem ("trying to pass the System Acceptance Review", "not trying to accomplish all the missions", "not to delay the SAR review video until the last minute", "develop an integration knowledge base"); per-subsystem requirements (rocker-bogie, <20 kg drivetrain incl. e-box, custom airless tyres, ≥4-DOF arm ≤15 kg, 48 V bus with per-rail fault isolation, 27 dBm 900 MHz radio, 1 km NLOS, three-orientation link coverage, VN-300 GNSS); mission priority split; risk tableUW Robotics Team / University of Waterloo, 2025.Original
  11. S-UBC-GHGitHub account ubcrover (linked from the site), 1 public repository, named deprecated; no rover code, CAD or documentationGitHub, 2026-10-25.Original