We did it! ERC 2023 is over.

After a stressed and long weekend in Kielce the ERC 2023 ended. During the Final Ceremony the winner of the ERC and the Best Team Award of every Task got announced. As the Final Ceremony started, the tension rose. Did we put enough effort into the project? Or could we have done more?

Since the Final Ceremony is already over, we know what rank we got. But first, a little Summary of our Weekend in Poland. The Weekend started on Thursday when we could test our Rover on the Mars Yard. On Friday, we had our first task. During the Navigation Task, we couldn’t let the rover navigate autonomously over the Mars Yard. We had to turn on the Cameras and drive manually, meaning we lost 80% of the reached Points. The next day started with the Science Task, on which we could start and land the drone, take the deep drill sample, take a rock sample and measure it. It was a complete Success. A few hours later, we started on the Maintenance Task, where we were able to complete the whole task manually. For the following ERC, we want to automate this task. Last but not least, we had the Presentation Task, where we presented our Team and Rover to the jury and faced their questions. All this wouldn’t be possible without the help of our sponsors, who supported us with materials and financially, our university, who supported us financially and provided our projectroom, our professors, who coached us, and all the other persons who helped us with our orders, rooms and production.

And after all, the effort was enough. We took second place and got the Award for the best Collection Task. We finished closely behind AGH Space Systems and before the second Swiss Team EPFL Xplore. Not only that, but we all had a good time meeting old and new friends from different countries all over Europe and the world.