Official Rules
The full official competition rules for 2025-2026 are available here.
Challenge Overview
Objective
The primary objective is to advance the development of artificial intelligence for multi-robot or multi-drone systems, a critical subject for both defense and civil security applications.
The Rescue Scenario
The core mission involves:
- Exploring an unknown, difficult-to-access, and potentially dangerous area
- Searching for people (stationary or wandering)
- Guiding them out to a designated Rescue Area
A typical use case: investigating the dark or smoky basement of a collapsed building.
Drone Fleet & Equipment
Each team manages a fleet of 10 drones. Each drone is equipped with:
- Communication functions
- Laser rangefinder (lidar)
- Semantic sensor (for object nature determination)
- GPS
Drones have life points that diminish with collisions, leading to destruction when they reach zero.
Technical Focus
Teams must design solutions robust enough to:
- Handle limited communication range
- Collaborate to share information
- Manage unforeseen events (sensor/communication failures, drone loss)
Any scientific approaches are welcomed: planning, learning, bio-inspiration, etc.
Simulation & Evaluation
All development takes place in a 2D simulation environment with maps of increasing complexity. Features include:
- Physics engine
- Simulated sensors and communications
- Special zones: GPS denied, communications denied, drone destruction
Drone controllers must be developed in Python. The simulation environment is open source.
Evaluations
- Intermediate Evaluation 1: Navigation functions
- Intermediate Evaluation 2: Coordination and communication functions
- Final Evaluation: Conducted on unknown maps, testing all difficulties in a complete scenario
Scoring Criteria
Weighted evaluation focuses on:
- Percentage of people rescued
- Percentage of map explored
- Drone life points remaining
- Percentage of time remaining
The top 10 teams after technical evaluation must present their solution to a jury. Quality and operational credibility of the solution are considered in the final score.
The organizers do not claim any intellectual property rights over the solutions.