YILDIZ ROVER (Yıldız Technical University)

Yıldız Rover has five consecutive URC finals and no year above 16^th. The 2026 season was the first in which the total and the rank moved together. OASIS scored 230.80 for 16^th of 36, with autonomy at 44 and Equipment Servicing at 34.21, while Delivery returned to zero. Two of the five seasons, 2023 and 2025, scored all four missions; the other three carried at least one zero.

Identity and results

Yıldız Rover is based at Yıldız Technical University in Istanbul and sits under the SPARK student club. It appears on the URC team list in all five seasons from 2022 to 2026 and in every score sheet in that period S-URC22-TEAMS S-URC23-TEAMS S-URC24-TEAMS S-URC25-TEAMS S-URC26-TEAMS. Tier C is the census label for five finals; the tier rule is defined on the census page.

The team’s own claim on 2023 is “22^nd among 104 teams” S-YILDIZ-DECK. The 104 is the registered field; the ranked field that year was 31, and the score sheet places the team 22^nd of 31 S-CENSUS S-URC23-SCORES. Both figures are true about different denominators.

The total rises from 161.63 in 2022 to 230.80 in 2026, with one fall in 2024. The rank does not follow, because the finals field grew from 26 teams to 36 in the same period S-CENSUS.

Rover generations

2022–2024: unnamed generations. No rover name is published for the first three finals.

GENESIS (2025). Named in the 2025 European Rover Challenge profile, with a 20-member team S-YILDIZ-ERC25.

OASIS (2026). Named on the team site as the fifth-generation rover and the machine for the 2026 URC S-YILDIZ-SITE. The site publishes no change from GENESIS, so whether the step is a rebuild or a rename is not stated.

Subsystems

The five-year mission profile comes from the official score sheets for 2022 to 2026 S-URC22-SCORES S-URC23-SCORES S-URC24-SCORES S-URC25-SCORES S-URC26-SCORES.

Mobility. No chassis, suspension, wheel, motor or mass figure is published for any generation. The sponsorship deck lists material categories rather than specifications S-YILDIZ-DECK.

Arm and end-effectors. No axes, reach, payload or actuator information is published. The servicing profile was 0, 26.4, 15, 24 and 34.21, which suggests a manipulator that works intermittently.

Science. The deck names “scientific kits that can perform soil analysis” as a sponsorship item; no instrument or assay is described S-YILDIZ-DECK. The science profile was 78, 33.93, 70, 63 and 71, and the 2023 dip is unexplained.

Delivery. The profile was 0, 13.5, 10, 20 and 0: never above 20 in five attempts.

Autonomy. The profile was 0, 33.6, 0, 22.4 and 44, an oscillation until 2026, when it became the team’s best mission.

Communications, power and compute. Not published. No public repository exists; the team’s GitHub organisation has zero public repositories S-YILDIZ-GH.

Mission performance

2022, 24^th of 26 with 161.63. Science 78 carried the result; delivery, servicing and autonomy were zero S-URC22-SCORES. Yıldız was the only Turkish team in the 2022 finals field S-YILDIZ-DECK S-URC22-SCORES.

2023, 22^nd of 31 with 193.80. All four missions scored, but science fell from 78 to 33.93; the gain came from autonomy, 0 to 33.6, and servicing, 0 to 26.4 S-URC23-SCORES.

2024, 28^th of 34 with 181.26. Science recovered to 70, autonomy returned to zero and servicing fell to 15 S-URC24-SCORES. The worst rank of the five years.

2025, 26^th of 35 with 216.30. The best total before 2026, with a balanced profile: science 63, delivery 20, servicing 24 and autonomy 22.4 S-URC25-SCORES.

2026, 16^th of 36 with 230.80. The best rank by six places, driven by autonomy 44 and servicing 34.21, with delivery back to zero and the lowest SAR of the record at 81.59 S-URC26-SCORES.

Lessons for a first build

• Zero delivery is the recurring loss. Delivery scored zero in 2022 and 2026 and never exceeded 20 in five attempts.
• A named generation each year resets reliability. GENESIS and OASIS are strong communication and recruitment devices, and each new build restarts the field-testing clock.
• Use other competitions as test weekends. The Anatolian Rover Challenge, second in 2023, the European Rover Challenge, tenth in 2022, and Teknofest, first in 2022, are a development path between URC seasons S-YILDIZ-DECK; the URC-specific missions remain the gap.
• One strong mission moves a rank. The 2026 rank jump came with autonomy at 44, the team’s first autonomy score above 33.6 in five years.
• Publish the change between generations. Two named rovers and no published change is the main reason the 2026 improvement cannot be attributed.

What remains uncertain

Mass, dimensions, suspension, drive motors, battery, radios and on-board computer are unpublished in five years of competition. What changed between GENESIS and OASIS is not stated. Why science fell from 78 to 33.93 in 2023 and recovered is not explained. Team size is given as 20 on the 2025 European Rover Challenge registration, while the site cites members from 21 departments; whether these describe one roster is not stated. Whether the 2026 autonomy score came from a new stack or the 2025 one cannot be checked, because no repository exists.

Team sources

• rover.yildiz.edu.tr, the team site with the OASIS page, news and sponsors.
• 2024–25 sponsorship deck, the only multi-page document the team publishes, with the competition record and subteam structure.
• European Rover Challenge 2025 profile, rover GENESIS and the 20-member team.
• yildiz-rover on GitHub, the organisation’s public repository list.