Here is an opportunity for the student community to contribute to India’s future space programmes, including ISRO’s future goal of exploring the surface of Mars.
ISRO has announced the ISRO Robotics Challenge – URSC (IRoC-U 2026) which challenges students to develop “Towards Swarm Expedition: Autonomous Surveyor Challenge for Exploration, Navigation and Dynamics (ASCEND)” without any external navigation aids such as GNSS, pseudolite or reflector array.
Future goals
ISRO said that one of its future goals is to explore the surface of Mars and as part of the exploration of the surface of Mars, an autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) will carry out scientific activities.
“ISRO is seeking innovative ideas and suggestions in the field of navigation from the Indian youth for future missions by conducting the Robotics Challenge,” he said.
According to the space agency, the IRoC-U 2026 challenge will include autonomous navigation, landing, power transfer and image data verification.
“Autonomous aerial swarms are the future of planetary exploration: they can deploy, explore, recharge and share data without direct human control. ASCEND takes the first step towards this vision,” ISRO said.
What the teams will do
In this challenge, teams build a micro-UAV (aerial vehicle) and a base station. “The UAV takes off from its base station, acquires the target characteristics it needs to identify, searches a designated area for those features, then returns to the base station, transmits its data and recharges without GPS, telemetry or remote piloting,” he added.
The current challenge focuses on the development and demonstration of navigation and guidance techniques rather than the construction of aircraft. ISRO stated that students can use/develop any available (regular) aircraft meeting existing DGCA rules.
The space agency also conducted IRoC-U 2024 and 2025, and winners and runners-up are ineligible for IRoC-U 2026.
The last date for registration and submission of a complete proposal for the preliminary round is January 12, 2026. It said that the final on-site competition for the execution of the required tasks is to be held in Bengaluru.
Published – 28 Dec 2025 21:48 IST
