FHNW Mars Rover

In 2021 a team of students from the University of Applied Sciences and Arts northwestern Switzerland started building a Mars Rover in order to Compete in the European Rover Challenge, an international competition where students from universities all around the world compete in different challenges. (See https://roverchallenge.eu/)

While early versions were built on modular profiles, later versions quickly moved to machined parts, thanks to the support of our university's machine shop.

A part we invested an exceptional amount of time in, was the tires, since we can have the best rover there can be, if we don't make it to the desired location everything goes to waste.

We made multiple versions, and simulations, and ended up with 3D printed tires made from PLA, so they are soft and fit themselves snugly to the surface.

The final version of our Rover saw the light of day just around 2 months before the competition, which aired in September 2022. There still was a lot of fine-tuning to do, such as add cameras, fix multiple mayor and minor bugs in our software and much more.

While we unfortunately had a few issues at the competition which we didn't have back home, we still managed to get to 6th place. But we've learned a lot for the upcoming competition in 2023. Our team also grew by a few people, which enables us to do more things we couldn't do before.

If you want to learn more about our project, visit: fhnw.ch/rover