ITRI Finishes Runner-Up in Extreme Environment Drone Challenge at 2025 World Robot Summit

On November 17, 2025, ITRI finished runner-up in the World Robot Summit’s Extreme Environment Drone Challenge (HEDC), held at the Fukushima Robot Test Field. Its drone completed three missions in less than one hour and set two firsts: reaching the most distant rescue point by UAV and deploying an FPV drone inside a building to search.

For researchers designing disaster-response operations and rescue organizations, the result showed that, even in a scenario where roads and communications are cut off, offshore surveys, locating stranded people and delivering supplies, and reconnaissance inside buildings can be carried out consecutively within one hour. According to ITRI, its carrier aircraft made three trips in and out of a narrow indoor area with heavy debris while carrying a small drone, and reached the most distant rescue point amid strong winds and limited communications bandwidth. These achievements offer concrete reference points for planning search procedures that combine outdoor and indoor operations.