Australian Rover Challenge
Australian Rover Challenge
21 - 24 March 2024 / South Australia
The Mission
The Australian Rover Challenge (ARCh) is an annual robotics competition held by the University of Adelaide, where university students from across Australia and around the globe, battle it out in a full-scale Lunar mission, using semi-autonomous rovers that they have designed and built themselves.
Competitors showcase their skills in a custom built simulated lunar environment, and complete a range of tasks including navigation, resource, and construction. Unlike many other rover competitions across the world which focus on Martian exploration, the ARCh is focused specifically on completing tasks on a simulated Lunar surface.
A/Prof John Culton
Director, Andy Thomas Centre for Space Resources
John Culton, Director of the Andy Thomas Centre for Space Resources, welcomes all students and teams who are participating in the Australian Rover Challenge.
Welcome! On behalf of the Andy Thomas Centre for Space Resources, I am pleased to welcome you to the Australian Rover Challenge.
While the ultimate focus of our Centre is to support long-term human presence beyond low-earth orbit, we know that our astronauts will necessarily be preceded, and then accompanied by, significant numbers and varied types of remotely operated or semi-autonomous robots.
Thus, initiatives to further develop an Australian competency in this sector align perfectly with our Centre’s mission.
We are endeavouring to deliver a highly rewarding and globally unique challenge series. Importantly, the skillsets developed in support of this Challenge are becoming increasingly relevant as efforts to develop infrastructure required to support long-duration human operations in deep space steadily gain support from programs such as NASA’s Artemis. So, again, welcome to Adelaide and the Australian Rover Challenge. We are looking forward to seeing what you and your rovers can accomplish.
Registrations for the 2024 Australian Rover Challenge have now closed. If you'd like to attend the event as a spectator, check back here for more info as it becomes available.
The rules and requirements document is now available to view:
The SAR guidelines are now available to review:
Congratulations to the 2023 Australian Rover Challenge winners!
Monash Nova Rover
First place
Projekt Scorpio
Second place
Unimelb Rover Team (URT)
Third place
Australian Rover Challenge partners
We would like to thank:
- our premier partner Boeing,
- our major partners ispace and the Australian Space Agency and
- event supporters Defence SA, SASIC and Drone Deploy
for their part in bringing the 2023 Australian Rover Challenge to life.
