University Rover Challenge

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University Rover Challenge

First event	2006
Occur every	Annually
Purpose	Education
Headquarters	Mars Desert Research Station Hanksville, Utah

The University Rover Challenge (URC) by the Mars Society is a robotics competition for university level students that challenges teams to design and build a rover that would be of use to early explorers on Mars.^[1] The competition is held annually at the Mars Desert Research Station, outside Hanksville, Utah in the United States. The site was selected by the Mars Society for its geographic similarity to Mars: In addition to being a largely barren desert area, the soil in the area has a chemical composition similar to Martian soil. The competition has also expanded internationally to include the European Rover Challenge, Canadian International Rover Challenge, Indian Rover Challenge, Anatolian Rover Challenge and the Australian Rover Challenge.

The aim of the University Rover Challenge is to encourage students to develop skills in robotics, improve the state-of-the-art in rovers, and work in multi-disciplinary teams with collaboration between scientists and engineers. The competition was launched in 2006 with competitions held annually every summer since 2007.