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MISSION 10
(2024 -- )
Following the completion of Mission 9, won by Ascend NTNU in 2023, the International Aerial Robotics Competition unveiled Mission 10. The objective is to prove that a swarm of very small autonomous drones can find and designate a safe route across a 100-meter anti-personnel minefield fast enough to matter, with the whole problem solved inside ten minutes: roughly seven for the swarm to survey the field and mark a route, and three for that route to be traversed.
Four aerial vehicles, each no more than one pound (453g), launch from the edge of the field. They must search unknown terrain, localize the mines they find, fuse their observations into a single shared map in real time, and from that map compute a walkable corridor to the far side. Endurance must exceed seven minutes, or the survey cannot be finished. The map is delivered live to a mobile device, so the route exists as something a human could actually read and follow.
A key change from the opening year is that the person-at-risk has been removed entirely. In year one the person could augment the drones by visually searching the ground as he advanced. The full burden now rests on the aerial robots, and the three-minute crossing is simulated rather than walked. The mines were redesigned to match: visually faithful replicas of the PFM-1 with a matching 1x1 inch Aruco tag placed on it.
The center of gravity is coordination, not sensing. What is tested is whether four, weight-constrained aircraft can act as one perceptual system under time pressure and produce an answer a human would stake their legs on. Scoring weights a genuinely safe path above any individual technical achievement, and teams should work from the formula in the current rules.
Following the completion of Mission 9, won by Ascend NTNU in 2023, the International Aerial Robotics Competition unveiled Mission 10. The objective is to prove that a swarm of very small autonomous drones can find and designate a safe route across a 100-meter anti-personnel minefield fast enough to matter, with the whole problem solved inside ten minutes: roughly seven for the swarm to survey the field and mark a route, and three for that route to be traversed.
Four aerial vehicles, each no more than one pound (453g), launch from the edge of the field. They must search unknown terrain, localize the mines they find, fuse their observations into a single shared map in real time, and from that map compute a walkable corridor to the far side. Endurance must exceed seven minutes, or the survey cannot be finished. The map is delivered live to a mobile device, so the route exists as something a human could actually read and follow.
A key change from the opening year is that the person-at-risk has been removed entirely. In year one the person could augment the drones by visually searching the ground as he advanced. The full burden now rests on the aerial robots, and the three-minute crossing is simulated rather than walked. The mines were redesigned to match: visually faithful replicas of the PFM-1 with a matching 1x1 inch Aruco tag placed on it.
The center of gravity is coordination, not sensing. What is tested is whether four, weight-constrained aircraft can act as one perceptual system under time pressure and produce an answer a human would stake their legs on. Scoring weights a genuinely safe path above any individual technical achievement, and teams should work from the formula in the current rules.
