OzU Rover Qualifies to Be One of the Two Teams to Represent Turkey in ERC 2020

The Özyeğin University Rover Team represented Turkey during the European Rover Challenge (ERC), which took place remotely in Poland, the host country, from September 11 through September 13, 2020.  33 finalist teams advanced to the ERC 2020 Finals, with 28 teams ultimately taking part in the grand finale. The OzU Rover Team came in 7th during the competition. 

European Rover Challenge (ERC) is a prestigious international space-robotics event where university teams from several continents are expected to remotely control a Martian rover on the world’s largest artificial Martian track to complete a set of tasks assigned. Hosted by Poland under the auspices of the European Space Agency since 2014, the ERC was organized for the fifth time this year. The OzU Rover Team took part in the fifth edition of the ERC  as the only team from Turkey that has qualified to attend the ERC grand finale for five times in a row.

The ERC grand finale took place remotely this year in 3 sessions. In the first session, our team made a technical presentation to demonstrate their backgrounds, projects and their approach to the online challenge. In the second session, team members remotely controlled a robotic arm physically located in Poland to perform the assigned tasks on a dashboard. Finally, in the navigation and science mission, our students tried to remotely navigate a rover on an artificial Martian track in Poland, while at the same time collecting data for a report about the geology of the region. Teams were graded for the technical reports they submitted and their overall performance in completing the assigned tasks. This year, OzU Rover and METU Rover, the two teams from Turkey that qualified to attend the grand finale, succeeded in making it to the top 10 teams in the ERC 2020.

The OzU Rover Team was established by Assistant Professor Özkan Bebek from Özyeğin University in 2014 to raise awareness of robotics in Turkey, conduct scientific research in this field, and represent Turkey in international competitions. The team is made up of undergraduate students who are actively pursuing their engineering studies at Özyeğin University. The team that attended the ERC 2020 is made up of our Computer Science students Ahmet Çağatay Savaşlı, Berkecan Koçyiğit, Deniz Uğur, İsmail Can Yağmur, and Salih Metin Arkanöz, and our Mechanical Engineering students Ahmet Emre Toprak, Alp Çamsakız, Ataberk Yapıcı, Burcu Kaya, Mehmet Emil, Ozan Aktürk, and Suavi Yıldırım.