Project Theseus V
Theseus V is the fifth iteration of the Theseus program, and placed 1st in the 2026 Australian Rover Challenge!
Theseus V is the best performing UQ Space rover to date, placing 1st in the Australian Rover Challenge (ARCh) in 2026! This year featured a major design update to the drivetrain, moving from six to four wheels, which greatly improved our mobility and control.
Theseus V was the only rover to score over 100 points in any of the competition tasks, and achieved this on two of the four days! This amazing result is a testament to the dedication and hard work of every member of the UQ Space team, and highlighted how efficient Theseus was.
Staying true to the Theseus design philosophy of incremental changes, the chassis, motors, and core electronics were updated with only minor improvements, continuing to build on the strong performance of previous Theseus iterations.
Our autonomy system was vastly improved from previous iterations, featuring full closed-loop autonomy with FAST-LIO2 LiDAR-inertial SLAM, frontier-based exploration, and a Nav2 state machine for goal sequencing and recovery.
