JAXA hosted the 6th Kibo Robot Programming Challenge (Kibo-RPC), which began accepting applications on February 17, 2025. This year’s competition draws participation from a total of 13 countries, regions, and organizations, including the 11 Kibo-ABC member countries/regions that regularly participate in the Kibo-RPC, as well as the United States of America and the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA). The challenge for this year’s Kibo-RPC was to program the Astrobee drone robot aboard the International Space Station (ISS) to perform image recognition tasks. Teams were judged on both the accuracy and speed of their code. The competition involved running 10 different simulation patterns with varying image types and difficulty levels. The final ranking was determined by the average score of all 10 simulations.
Between late June and early July 2025, during the designated preliminary round period in each participating country and region, local organizing bodies held their respective competitions. In several cases, these preliminary rounds were staged as major events, with reports indicating they were met with excitement. In Australia, the local organizer, One Giant Leap Australia, ran each team’s program in the preliminary round simulation environment- with Dream Rover coming in first place.
Here are some comments from the representative teams from each participating country/region on their enthusiasm for the finals.