Space rovers made by students from across Asia-Pacific face-off at Manipal's Rover Challenge

Nine of the 10 teams were seen in action on the first day as the Indian Rover Challenge was off to a great start at the MIT ground in Udupi on Thursday. Two teams from Poland, three from Bangladesh and the remaining five from India are taking part in the three-day meet which was formally inaugurated by the Registrar of Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Dr Narayana Sabhahit on Wednesday at the MIT Library auditorium.

"One of the Polish teams did not get clearance for their robot in Bangalore, but the team members are here," said an official of the organising team, Mars Rover Manipal. The other nine teams participated in Extreme Retrieval and Delivery Task on day one. The teams were to detect objects from the base station without being in direct line of sight with the rover and deliver them to a dummy astronaut hidden in another place.

Then they further had to cross a rocky garden to retrieve another object and were also supposed to climb a steep slope and come to the other side. The task was supposed to be completed within 30 minutes. Only three teams were able to cross the rocky garden successfully. All the teams will resume the challenge tomorrow with autonomous traversal and equipment servicing task.

The participating teams include IIT Madras, VIT Vellore, VIT Chennai, NIT Surat, Delhi Technological University, two teams from Poland and three teams from Bangladesh. The rules do not permit host team Mars Rover Manipal to participate.

The Indian Rover Challenge (IRC) features an engineering design challenge to engage students worldwide in the next phase of space exploration. Indian Rover Challenge is the only robotics and space exploration competition of its kind in Asia-Pacific which aims to ignite and encourage the spirit of innovation amongst budding engineers as they set on a quest to build a space exploration rover, using their skills and ideas. The competition challenges high school and college students to design and build next-generation Mars rover and compete in Mars-simulated conditions.