About the Australian Rover Challenge

A robotic vehicle on a sandy surface, with visible wires and mechanical components, during a desert or outdoor testing environment with solar panels in the background.

Australian Rover Challenge

The Australian Rover Challenge (ARCh) is an annual robotic competition held by Adelaide University. Students from across Australia and the globe showcase their talent and capabilities in a full-scale Lunar mission, using semi-autonomous rovers that are self-designed.

The leading goals of the ARCh include:

  • Create new university student teams

  • Engage with industry

  • Grow with the Australian space industry

  • Support Australian space research

The Missions

Post-Landing Task

This task requires to establish an In-Situ Resource Utilisation (ISRU) outpost in preparetion of upcoming human landing.

Excavation & Construction Task

This task aims to conduting foundation services for a future human landing, which includes rock clearing, excavation and berm construction and paver construction.

Space Resources Task

Two primary tasks entailed in this part are:

  1. In-situ resource prosepecting

  2. The exavation and processing of a target resource.

Mapping & Autonomous Task

The purpose of this task is exploration, completing autonomous phase and non-autonomous phase, and build a larger-scale map.

The Adelaide Rover Team's Rover Romulus at the Australian Rover Challenge 2025.