After lunar mining robot "Chondrobot" and Bangladesh’s first nano-satellite "Onnesha", students of BRAC University have developed another space project named "Mongol Tori". Mongol-Tori is a next generation mars rover that will one day work alongside human explorers in the field. It is prepared for University Rover Challenge URC 2018, organized by The Mars Society. URC is an annual competition which asks college/university students to design and build the world’s best Mars rover.
Rovers competing at the URC finals face four extremely difficult tasks for their Mars rovers: the Extreme Retrieval and Delivery Task, the Equipment Servicing Task, the Autonomous Traversal Task, and the Science Cache Task. The main challenge is to design and build highly capable robotic systems able to traverse extreme and aggressive terrain, perform maintenance on critical field equipment, and conduct meaningful field science.
The 2018 rendition of URC hosted 35 rovers and more than 500 students from ten countries at the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in southern Utah.
BRACU Mongol-Tori secured 13th position in the final round with a perfect score of 100 out of 100 in science cache task. BRACU Mongol-Tori previously passed a Preliminary Design Review milestone, and an extremely competitive System Acceptance Review milestone.
Team Mongol-Tori consists of 22 members lead by Mohammad Zahirul Islam. The team is divided into 8 sub teams. Mechanical sub-team lead by Ali Ahsan, Science sub-team lead by Syed Mohammad Kamruzzaman, Control sub-team lead by Razin Bin Isa, Electronics sub-team lead by Md Mahbub Ali, Communication sub-team lead by Sayantan Ark, Design sub-team lead by Zarif Zafar, Promotion sub-team lead by Soyeb Ahmed and Writing sub-team lead by Rowshni Tasneem. Other team members are Ragib Aunjum, Ekhwan Islam, K M Fahim Mahmud, Masrur Khan, Fariha Sazid, Tarin Sultana, Mehzabien Iqbal, Noshin Saiyara, Gazi Musa Al Johan, Zaber Mohammad and Monir Hasan.
The team has Dr. Md. Khalilur Rhaman as advisor and Md. Saiful Islam as co-advisor for overall supervising and guidance.
The journey of “BRACU Mongol-Tori” started back at December 2016 with 16 active members and Dr. Md. Khalilur Rhaman, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science & Engineering as supervisor.
Mongol-Tori reflected the dedication, passion, and ingenuity of the team. They spend a whole academic year to build this rover. There is a lack of patronage in our country, despite lack of energy. Govt. and industries should help hand out so that our country can progress in the technology and robot industry.
Source: http://www.bracumongoltori.com, http://urc.marssociety.org