IIIT-Dharwad team's GPS-free drone takes fourth place in ISRO Robotics Challenge
Team Icarus from the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Dharwad, has secured fourth place in the ISRO Robotics Challenge–URSC (IRoC-U) 2026, winning a cash prize of ₹2 lakh.
The seven-member team comprised Jayesh Patil, Saksham Gupta, Aswin Joseph, Priyanshu Mittal, Raskin Verma, Ankit Dash and Mohammad Rehan. The team was among 20 selected for the final round, held at the U.R. Rao Satellite Centre in Bengaluru, after clearing the preliminary, qualification and elimination stages of the competition.
The details were shared at a press conference at the IIIT Dharwad campus on Tuesday by director S.R. Mahadeva Prasanna and Professor of Practice Mallikarjun Kande.
For the challenge, the team developed an autonomous heavy-payload quadcopter designed to operate in a simulated Mars-like environment without GPS connectivity. The drone was required to navigate on its own, identify designated targets, carry out mission operations and return to its base without human intervention.
Prof. Kande, who guided the team through the development and preparation phases, said the system incorporated visual-inertial navigation, optical-flow-based navigation and computer vision for target detection. The students undertook extensive testing and debugging to integrate the hardware and software required for autonomous operations, he said.
The results were announced during the National Space Day celebrations and awards ceremony in Ahmedabad, organised with the involvement of ISRO's Space Applications Centre.
National Space Day is observed in India on August 23 each year to mark the soft landing of the Chandrayaan-3 mission's Vikram lander near the lunar south pole in 2023. The ISRO Robotics Challenge is one of the space agency's student outreach efforts, inviting teams from educational institutions to design and build robots for mission-like scenarios.
Prof. Prasanna said the achievement reflected the students' technical expertise, perseverance, teamwork and innovation. It also demonstrated the capabilities of IIIT Dharwad students in autonomous robotics, aerial systems and technologies relevant to future space exploration, he said.
Prof. K. Gopinath, in charge of student welfare, Registrar Satish Annigeri and the student achievers were present at the press conference.
Autonomous navigation without GPS is a core requirement for vehicles operating on other planets, since satellite-based navigation systems of the kind used on Earth are not available there. Space agencies therefore work on onboard methods — including cameras, inertial sensors and computer vision — that allow a craft to determine its position, direction and targets on its own. Testing such systems in simulated environments is a standard step before they are considered for actual missions.
The fourth-place finish places the Dharwad team among the top performers in a national-level challenge that draws entries from engineering institutions across the country. The institute said the students' work on the project was carried out over several months of development and field testing.
