For the second consecutive year and third time since 2018, Saddleback College’s SC Robotics team has advanced to the finals of the prestigious University Rover Challenge.
The 2022-23 Robotics team is led by Jacob Feingold, Team Leader; Renee Le and Laura Johann, Science Leads; Liam Kerrigan, Mechanical Lead; Jasper Doan, Programming Lead; and Andrew George, Business Lead.
The University Rover Challenge (URC) is the world's premier robotics competition for college students. URC challenges teams to design and build a rover for simulated extraterrestrial terrain to help develop the next generation of Mars exploration vehicles. Teams submitted both written reports as well as video demonstrations of their rovers, which were scored by URC's panel of judges and evaluated for engineering skills, creativity, and ingenuity.
Saddleback Robotics is one of 37 teams representing 10 countries selected from 104 overall entrants to earn a spot in the URC finals, scheduled for May 31-June 3 at the Mars Desert Research Station in Hanksville, Utah. The URC website states the Mars Desert Research Station is “one of the most extreme and Mars-like environments on Earth.”
Saddleback is the only two-year college to reach the finals, and scored higher overall than multiple four-year universities, including UC Berkeley and Cal Tech. SC Robotics had a perfect score in the competition’s Science category.
This year's SC Robotics rover (pictured above) is named "Helios." To learn about the specifications and operations of Helios, click here to view the SC Robotics video which accompanied the team's URC entry.
The Saddleback College team advisors are Mitch Haeri and Jim Repka.