Robots and drones at the European Robotics Hackathon 2025

In the three main categories 'Search & Rescue', 'Mapping' and 'Manipulation', the organizing team from the Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomics FKIE focused on combined scenarios for moving and flying systems. A total of 15 teams, including pupils and students as well as representatives from research and industry, traveled to the globally unique venue to put their Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) to the test under the most difficult conditions. Tight corners, narrow spaces, steep stairs, hardly any light and meter-thick concrete and steel walls that do not allow radio communication with the outside world are all part of the challenge. The biennial hackathon is hosted by the Austrian Armaments and Defense Technology Agency (ARWT), which is responsible for another unique selling point: The military provides real radioactive sources that have to be detected or mapped.

There are exactly five sources this year, but the teams don't know that during their 30-minute rounds. Around 40 cameras keep an eye on every corner of the hackathon site - every corridor, every bend, the well-hidden radiation sources, the more than 50-metre-high machine hall that the drones are supposed to explore and the two heavy steel doors behind which the dummies for the 'Search & Rescue' category are stored.

Jury team of radiation and robotics experts

EnRicH organizer Dr Frank E. Schneider, deputy head of the FKIE's Cognitive Mobile Systems (CMS) department, and his team of organizers keep a close eye on every run via these cameras. "The requirement for cooperation between flying and moving systems and an unknown deployment scenario that is very large and spread over two levels is a highly challenging task," admits Schneider. "There is a lot of talk about cooperation between UAVs and UGVs, but we can see that there is still considerable room for improvement here."

The EnRicH team of judges consists of renowned radiation and robotics experts: Dr. Michael Gustmann from Kerntechnischer Hilfsdienst, Jan-Peter Paulick, Technical Government Director at the Bundeswehr Technical Service for Land-Based Vehicle Systems, Engineer and Troop Technology (WTD 41), the two robotics experts Professor Daniel Watzenig and Kenneth Pink and Thilo Behrendt, Research Officer for Key Technologies at the Agency for Innovation in Cybersecurity (Cyber Agency). During each run, they look over the participants' shoulders and record their results. "The value of such hackathons also lies in the fact that the teams develop a learning curve over the course of the event," explains Behrendt. "An approach that works well at home doesn't necessarily have to do the same in unfamiliar, difficult terrain like here." A plan B is then needed, which the teams develop directly on site.

Programming deep into the night

And sometimes well into the night. "There's no such thing as free time or closing time at an event like this," says Noah Heckel. The 17-year-old high school student from near Nuremberg has already successfully participated in several RoboCups with his two teammates from CJT-Robotics, but their 'Error 404' at EnRicH did not work properly at first. "Establishing a stable connection to the network was much more difficult than expected," he says. But in several night sessions, they finally solved the problem - and in the end impressed the judges with an impressive performance. "The team worked in a very imaginative, creative and solution-oriented way," praises Behrendt accordingly. "That was a great achievement." Which, incidentally, was honored with the EnRicH 'Young Scientist Award'.

According to Behrendt, they saw many exciting solutions among the participants, some close to what is currently being used. For example, the Polish team Husarion, which was the only one to use fiber optic cables as a communication solution and was thus able to maintain the data flow to its robot 'Lynx' even in the furthest corner of the nuclear power plant.

Continuation at EnRicH 2027

"A very clever approach," also praises EnRicH organizer Schneider, who also rates the performance in the creation of 3D environment models across several floors positively, for example. "We were able to observe many interesting innovations, although all teams were hampered in their development by the necessary changeover of the Robot Operating System from ROS 1 to ROS 2," he concludes. Schneider already has the first ideas for the European Robotics Hackathon 2027 in mind: "We will continue to develop tried-and-tested components from this year and build on them," he promises.