Inaugural Rover Challenge proves a winner

Rover teams competed in four challenges at the inaugural Australian Rover Challenge (ARC) on North Terrace campus on 27 and 28 March.

Challenges included driving off a lunar lander followed by a systems check, searching for and extracting buried frozen water, picking up and stacking blocks and navigating rovers remotely across the lunar landscape using information only from the rover’s camera.

Students from the University of Adelaide, Monash University and RMIT designed their own custom-built rovers which they navigated remotely around a simulated lunar landscape.

This was the first time that the global challenge came to Australia.

All the teams undertook navigation, resource utilisation, and construction tasks while assisted and mentored by international industry and government partners.

The students from Monash University were overall winners. All participants benefitted from the experience in which they demonstrated their talent and capability in space activities.

The ARC aimed to address the challenge set out in the Australian Space Agency 2019 - 2028 Civil Space Strategy to implement STEM initiatives and partnerships with industry to support the growth of a future workforce in the Australian space sector.