Real mountains. Not a Mars yard.
A robotics competition set in genuine alpine terrain above Davos, Switzerland — planned alongside the Davos Tech Summit. Student and research teams bring rovers and drones out of the sandbox and into a mountain that does not cooperate.
Why another rover challenge
The European Rover Challenge runs on a constructed Mars yard of roughly 30 × 30 metres. The University Rover Challenge uses the Utah desert; CIRC uses Canadian flatland. The Alps are already there — steeper, colder, less predictable, and effectively unbounded.
Natural scree, real gradients, snow patches and weather that changes inside an hour. No set dressing, no reset button.
Potentially the largest competition area in Europe. Distances that make autonomy a requirement rather than a bonus category.
Aerial scouting of terrain a rover cannot reach — the emphasis of this first edition, not an afterthought discipline.
Planned alongside the Davos Tech Summit: teams meet industry, researchers and investors instead of only each other.
We are in conversation about tasks written by organisations that do this work for a living in these mountains.
Organised by the crew behind the FHNW Rover Träff, which has grown from 3 teams in 2023 to 8 in 2026.
The tasks — draft
A science task on the mountain, then a technical task in front of a crowd. Final task definitions will be published with the official rules.
Friday on the mountain, Saturday morning on stage
Collect data on the mountainside with your rover and your drone. Real terrain, no audience, and nothing arranged for your convenience.
Turn Friday's data into a report and a presentation, then give it at the congress centre. Jury and audience to be announced.
Saturday afternoon in the Kurpark, next to the congress centre
Drive a course in the Kurpark. The more of it your rover does on its own, the better it scores.
Operate real equipment: panels, switches, connectors. Inspect it, work out what is wrong, and fix it.
Schedule — 2–6 June 2027
Five days in Davos, two of them competition days. Friday is spent collecting data on the mountainside. Saturday is in town: science presentations in the morning, navigation and maintenance in the Kurpark from midday, and the award ceremony that evening.
Location
Two venues. Data for the science task is collected on a real mountainside: the Flüelapass. Everything on Saturday happens in town: presentations at the congress centre, and the technical task in the Kurpark next to it, where spectators and summit guests can actually get there.
For teams
Registration for the first edition is open. The number of teams that sign up directly shapes the format, the budget and the pitch to sponsors — so the earlier you register, the more say you have.
2–6 June 2027
Davos, Switzerland · alongside the Davos Tech Summit
Register nowTeam questions? teams@alpinerover.ch