We participate in the CanSat Comeback Competition hosted by ARLISS, and organized by UNISEC in Japan .
The compeition invites students from around the world to design and build an autonomous robot for the purpose of being loaded into and launched out of a rocket.
Once the rocket is launched and is 3 miles high the robot is ejected. From here it is the robot's job is to safely reach the ground and navigate to provided GPS coordinates.
Our robots are only constrained by size, weight, and descent speed. The rest is up to us.
This means we have freedom to bring any robot we choose to design.
For those interested our regulations can be found here.
Black Rock Desert, Nevada
The design is just a body, two wheels, and a stabilizer.
It is the most common design brought to the competition because of its reliability and efficient volume utilization.
The version of The Rover pictured is the design we took last year in 2025,
and was our first attempt at making a robot for this competition.
It did not place because we did not move either times we landed.
This year we are improving every facet of this design, and the goal is to be within 10m of the target.
We are currently developing our first prototypes.
This project is meant to push our limits and challenge us more than The Rover,
as it is a passive glider, no propulsion.
The plan is for it to autonomously glide down to the target after ejection from the rocket.
There are numerous unique challenges with this design,
such as the safety features we will be implementing to keep everyone at the competition safe.
This year, this projects goal is to reach within 0.5 km of the target.
We are currently developing our first prototypes.
This project is similar in concept to the
sphereo toys,
in that it is a fully self-contained sphere.
However, ours will be much larger with a diameter of ~5.75 inches.
Because of our currently limited reasources and the fact we are a new club,
this project is not going to competition this year,
but we intend on bringing it in 2027.