Here is an opportunity for the student community to contribute to future Indian space programmes including ISRO’s future goal to explore the Martian surface.
ISRO has announced the ISRO Robotics Challenge – URSC (IRoC-U 2026) which challenges the students to develop “Towards Swarm Expedition: Autonomous Surveyor Challenge for Exploration, Navigation and Dynamics (ASCEND)” without any external navigation aids like GNSS, pseudolite or reflector arrays.
Future goals
The ISRO said that one of its future goals is the exploration of Martian surface and as a part of the Martian surface exploration, an Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) will carry out scientific activities.
“The ISRO solicits from the youth of India innovative ideas and designs in the area of navigation for future missions through the conduct of Robotics Challenge,” it said.
According to the space agency, the IRoC-U 2026 challenge will involve autonomous navigation, landing, power transfer, and image data validation.
“Autonomous aerial swarms are the future of planetary exploration: they can deploy, survey, recharge and share data without direct human control. The ASCEND takes the first step toward this vision,” the ISRO said.
What teams will do
In this challenge, teams will build a micro-UAV (aerial vehicle) and a base station. “The UAV departs from its base station, acquires the target characteristics it needs to identify, searches a designated area for those features, then returns to base station, transfer its data, and recharge- all without GPS, telemetry or remote piloting,” it added.
The current challenge focuses on developing and demonstrating navigation and guidance techniques rather than building aerial vehicles. The ISRO said students can use/develop any available (off-the-shelf) aerial vehicle complying with the existing rules of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation.
The space agency has conducted the IRoC-U 2024 and 2025 as well and winners and runners-up are not eligible to participate in the IRoC-U 2026.
Last date for registration and submission of the complete proposal for the preliminary round is January 12, 2026. It said that the final onsite competition to perform the required tasks is planned to be conducted in Bengaluru.
Published – December 28, 2025 09:48 pm IST
