SEDS - Northeastern University Mars Rover Team - New Arm!

The Students for the Exploration and Development of Space of Northeastern University (NU SEDS) is a student organization based in Boston, Massachusetts and a chapter of SEDS USA, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. We bring together over 200 students with a passion for space to compete in student engineering challenges, lead interdisciplinary teams, perform STEM education outreach, and raise awareness about advances in space exploration and astrophysics.

NU SEDS primarily supports and facilitates multiple research or competition-based project teams. We are currently supporting 4 technical projects: NURover, NU SUITS, NU Lunabotics, and NEST. Projects empower students to develop new technical skills not taught in the classroom. Over the past five years, NU SEDS projects have had tremendous success in both national and international competitions.

Our Northeastern University Mars Rover Team is made up of 60+ undergraduate students and competes in the international University Rover Challenge (URC). The Rover team achieves regular success at competition each year designing and building a rover capable of driving autonomously, operating wirelessly up to 2km away, and manipulating objects using its custom arm and 15 cameras. In 2025, our newest rover, Watney Mk VI, placed 3rd out of 114 teams at the URC. Additionally the team competed for the first time in the Summer Canadian International Rover Challenge and came in 4th.

We have extensively used PCBWay for both PCBs and machined parts in prior seasons. For example, our previous arm was almost entirely made from machined parts sourced from PCBWay. For this year’s competition, we hope to utilize PCBWay’s services again for our new rover with an upgraded arm.

Our new arm will contain a reversible end effector for multitool usage, as well as a novel breaking system that will allow for variable friction to be applied to the main shoulder and elbow joints. This would allow the arm to hold heavy loads with minimal effort while transporting, while still providing the ability for dynamic movements during normal operation.

Below is our System Acceptance Review from this past February where we showcased our rover’s achievements in advance of the University Rover Challenge. We will be creating another one this year, and hope to feature PCBWay in it as a lead sponsor of our new custom 6 degree of freedom arm with variable breaking.

As an official sponsor or donor, PCBWay will have access to a host of benefits including company branding on our website, social media, and team videos, access to team member resumes, and the chance to host collaborative outreach events. Depending on how PCBWay would like to provide aid to our club, we can work together in figuring out what type of donation package fits best.