IIIT-Dharwad team finishes fourth in Isro robotics challenge

Icarus, a seven-member team from IIIT-Dharwad earned national recognition for developing an autonomous heavy-payload quadcopter capable of navigating a Mars-like environment without GPS or human intervention Dharwad: A seven-member team from Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Dharwad secured fourth place in Isro Robotics Challenge–URSC (IRoC-U) 2026, winning Rs 2 lakh.

Team Icarus developed an autonomous heavy-payload quadcopter capable of navigating a Mars-like, GPS-denied environment without human intervention. The team comprised Jayesh Patil, Saksham Gupta, Aswin Joseph, Priyanshu Mittal, Raskin Verma, Ankit Dash and Mohammad Rehan. It cleared the preliminary, qualification and elimination rounds to finish among 20 finalists.

The offline field final was held at UR Rao Satellite Centre in Bengaluru. Organised by Isro, the national competition tested teams’ ability to develop and deploy robotic systems under challenging conditions. The quadcopter was designed to navigate autonomously, identify designated targets, conduct mission operations and return to its base.

The students integrated visual-inertial and optical-flow-based navigation with computer vision for target detection. Extensive testing, experimentation and system-level debugging helped the team overcome technical challenges. The project also provided practical experience in hardware integration, software development, autonomous navigation and real-world deployment.

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. IIIT Dharwad director Prof SR Mahadeva Prasanna congratulated the team. Mallikarjun Kande, professor of practice at the institute, guided the students during the project’s development and preparation.