UWr representatives at the European Rover Challenge 2025
On August 29-31, the European Rover Challenge 2025 took place at AGH University of Kraków. At this prestigious, strongly connected to the space sector event, University of Wrocław’s Faculty of Social Sciences was represented by a 3-person team — dr. hab. Bartosz Smolik, Paweł Skorb and Damian Wochnik.
This year, 126 teams from 33 countries registered for the event. Türkiye had the highest number of in-person participants, while India – the highest number of online participants. The victory was taken by Switzerland — represented by Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne.
While participating in the European Rover Challenge, the representatives of the University of Wrocław’s Faculty of Social Sciences gained valuable practical skills, refining especially their communication and promotion abilities. Apart from that, the event proved to be an opportunity to boost media presence. By covering what happened during the event, writing articles and posting on social media, the representatives of the Faculty of Social Sciences were able to improve their social competences, such as teamwork, interpersonal communication, promotion and marketing. They also successfully established new contacts that might be beneficial for organising future events at the faculty. The representatives’ engagement and active participation in the event increased the level of recognition and prestige of the University of Wrocław’s Faculty of Social Sciences and the Institute of Political Science, not only on a national, but also on an international scale.
Damian Wochnik, who participated in this year’s edition of ERC, expressed a positive opinion of the event: “A valuable skill I gained in this edition of the event is being better prepared to answer the needs of stakeholders. Being able to meet valuable people and getting more immersed in the increasingly popular cosmic sphere are the reasons why it is worth to take part in such initiatives.”
“In my opinion, a graduate of social sciences is able to participate in the cosmic theme of ECR by spreading information or engaging in promotional activities and communication with important participants, for example, politicians, that have influence over financing space exploration,” added Wochnik, who for the last few years has been associated with the Social Management Studies at the University of Wrocław’s Institute of Political Science.
Dr hab. Bartosz Smolik, who supervised the representation of the University of Wrocław’s Faculty of Political Sciences during ECR 2025, also spoke highly of the event: “I believe it is important to go beyond your university and scientific field. This way, it is possible to explore global trends in other fields, including engineering disciplines, and help the representatives of such fields to better understand the point of view of political and social sciences. Familiarising yourself with the popular science workshops dedicated to children can also be advantageous. The universities and non-governmental organisations which organise such exhibitions at ECR prove that some of the methods used at the workshops could be implemented to popularise political and social science majors.”
This year’s event was the 11th edition of the European Rover Challenge, which, apart from being the biggest, is also one of the most well-known cosmic robotics events organised in Europe. Worth mentioning is the fact that the participation of representatives of the University of Wrocław’s Faculty of Social Sciences contributed to realising the strategic goal nr 3 (developing cooperation within the socio-economic environment) included in the University’s Strategy of Development for the years 2021-2030.
Translated by Aleksandra Wysoczańska (student of English Studies at the University of Wrocław) as part of the translation practice.
Written by: Paweł Skorb
Date of publication: 16.09.2025.
Published by: EJK
