By Jasmine Makar 

The Toronto MetRobotics (TMR) team is preparing to head to the annual University Rover Challenge (URC) in Hanksville, Utah in May with their new 2026 rover, Ingenuity. 

A group of TMR members travel by car for three days every year to URC, an international rover competition for college students. According to their website, the URC “challenges student teams to design and build the next generation of Mars rovers that will one day work alongside astronauts exploring the Red Planet.”

TMR, a student group that works out of the Kerr Hall North’s basement, is comprised of seven different subteams, including software, electrical, mechanical, business and more. The team works together to modify and add features to their pre-existing rover every year. 

For the past two years, TMR has been a finalist in the URC, with the rover ranking in 16th place last year, according to their Instagram.

Second-year mechatronics engineering student and mechanical team member, Adam Futwe spoke to the changes the team is making. 

“They really like to push their iteration and improvement. So you’ll see that some aspects of our rover have stayed the same for a long time,” said Futwe. “The idea is that we just don’t have a rover that ends up the same as the year before—we [want to] improve something about it.” 

As a part of the improvement process, the team is working on a new arm for the rover, changing the mechanics of the arm after two years. 

Mae Awasthy, a third-year electrical engineering student has been on the team for nearly three years, they currently serve as the electrical lead.

Awasthy explained the changes they are making to the new arm trouble shooting the six degrees of freedom.

“A human arm can move a lot of different ways…forward, back, left, right, up and down. So our current arm cannot do the left or right motion, but the new one that we’re working on can, and that’s really going to help,” said Awasthy. 

The deadline to complete the System Acceptance Review (SAR) package was Feb. 27, the team has been working tirelessly to meet the deadline. Awasthy mentioned that they will spend up to 40 hours a week in their workshop space, also known as “the bunker,”  working on the rover to meet the necessary deadlines.

Heading into the URC, the team prepares for set mission tasks that they will have to complete, including “missions where we have to manipulate objects, missions where we have to track down objects, ones where we have to drive around autonomously,” said Futwe. 

“A lot of the work that we do leading up to the competition is optimizing the systems we have, software and hardware in order to be able to complete those competitions,” he said. 

This will be Awasthy’s second time attending the URC, which they describe the significance of the competition. 

“I think a lot of the time when you’re doing design work, it’s easy to kind of lose the idea of what you’re actually working on. But being [at URC] and going through [the competition] kind of gives you the idea of like, ‘Oh, this is what we’re trying to do,’” said Awathy. 

The team itself believes in fostering a positive environment for all their members, including their newer members, to not only learn and grow but to build a community and friendships. 

The environment is “one where you are allowed to make mistakes and encouraged to ask questions you might think are stupid, but they aren’t, because they help you learn,” said Futwe, adding that he has taken additional initiatives to integrate himself into the team.

Awasthy echoed similar sentiments explaining that the community aspect of the team goes beyond a “mentor, mentee sort of thing.”

“For me, the most important part of [the club] is the community that we have. All of us, beyond just working together, we’re all really good friends, and it’s just a great experience.”