IEEE/RSJ International Conference
on Intelligent Robots and Systems
19 – 25 October, 2025
Hangzhou, CHINA
IEEE/RSJ International Conference
on Intelligent Robots and Systems
19 – 25 October, 2025
Hangzhou, CHINA
AgiBot World Challenge
l Summary
Most existing robot learning benchmarks fall short when it comes to addressing real-world challenges, particularly those arising from low-quality data and limited sensing capabilities. These benchmarks often focus on short-horizon tasks within controlled environments. In contrast, the AgiBot World is the first large-scale multi-agents robotic dataset designed to advance multi-purpose humanoid robots. Building on the AgiBot World benchmark, this challenge offers a brand-new perspective to discuss broad areas of humanoid robots. Our goal is to provide a platform for these discussions at the IROS 2025 competition, fostering real-world impact and driving the development of more intelligent, embodied systems. In this challenge, participants are required to work with data from the real-world domain or collected interactively in a simulator. In both scenarios, participants must demonstrate an accurate understanding of their surroundings and make informed decisions based on the given context. Looking ahead, we are dedicated to continuously refining and evolving the benchmark, while also organizing more related events to foster progress and shape the future of the robotics community.
l Website
http://opendrivelab.com/challenge2025/#agibot
l Contact
Huijie Wang (huijie.wang@hotmail.com), Chengyu Li
l Organizers
· Maoqing Yao (AgiBot)
· Hongyang Li (Tsinghua University)
· Huijie Wang (OpenDriveLab)
· Chengyue Zhao (AgiBot)
· Shukai Yang (AgiBot)
· Jianlan Luo (AgiBot)
· Shijia Peng (OpenDriveLab)
· Liliang Chen (AgiBot)
· Jin Chen (OpenDriveLab)
RoboSense: The Robust Robot Sensing Challenge
l Summary
The RoboSense Challenge @ IROS 2025 is an international competition designed to evaluate and advance the robustness of robot sensing systems under real-world conditions. As robots increasingly operate in open and dynamic environments, ensuring resilience to data corruptions, sensor failures, and domain shifts has become a critical requirement. Spanning five diverse tracks, the challenge covers a wide range of robotic perception and planning tasks, including: (1) Driving with Language, (2) Social Navigation in Human-Crowd Environments, (3) Sensor Placement for Scene Understanding, (4) Cross-View Localization and Retrieval, and (5) Cross-Platform 3D Object Detection. Each track introduces unique challenges such as natural corruptions, occlusions, and platform shifts (e.g., from vehicles to drones and quadrupeds), encouraging the development of generalizable and robust methods. Participants will be evaluated using strong baselines, high-quality multi-modal datasets, and carefully designed robustness protocols. The competition aims to foster collaboration between academia and industry, promote open benchmarks, and catalyze innovation in resilient robot autonomy.
l Website
http://robosense2025.github.io/
l Contact
l Organizers
· Lingdong Kong (National University of Singapore)
· Ao Liang (National University of Singapore)
· Dongyue Lu (National University of Singapore)
· Yuhao Dong (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)
· Shaoyuan Xie (University of California, Irvine)
· Ye Li (University of Michigan)
· Tianshuai Hu (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)
Future of Robo Rule Book
l Summary
The "Future of Robo" competition simulates a smart factory environment where Humanoid Robots (HR) act as intelligent controllers and Engineering Vehicle Robots (EVR) serve as mobile executors. Contestant teams program and control these robots to collaboratively complete three core tasks: (1) Cargo Transportation: Efficiently moving objects within the factory; (2) Obstacle Crossing: Navigating robots through complex terrain; (3) Cargo Sorting: Accurately identifying and categorizing items. Teams will leverage key technologies including voice interaction, visual positioning, visual recognition, posture calibration, motion control, and multi-robot collaboration to achieve these objectives on a designated competition map.
l Website
l Contact
l Organizers
· Jichao Jiao
· Xiaoming Li
· Jianxin Pang
· Jialin Le
· Jinlian Li
· Jiamao Zhao
· Xiaobin Yang
UAV Autonomous Exploration & Search Challenge
l Summary
The Aerial Autonomy Challenge drives breakthroughs in autonomous aerial robotics, with a core focus on advanced navigation capabilities. The competition features diverse, complex scenarios simulating real-world environments, including structural and moving obstacles, narrow gaps, undulating surfaces, wind disturbances, and a unique "grove" flight zone.Designed to rigorously test key aspects of aerial autonomy—environmental adaptability, motion agility, and disturbance resilience—these challenges advance the development of intelligent aerial systems for industrial applications.
l Website
http://nspacerobot.com/iroschallenge
l Contact
l Organizers
· Prof. Fei Gao
· Dr. Huan Yu
· Prof. Boyu Zhou
· Prof. Ximin Lyu
· Prof. Guodong Lu
Quadruped Robot Challenge (QRC)
l Summary
Autonomy in disaster response situations requires a good mobile platform, perception technologies, navigation technologies, etc. Quadruped robots are inherently dynamic; thus, their competition is interesting to the audience and public and may draw the attention of potential sponsors. Quadruped Robot Challenges (QRC) was inaugurated in ICRA 2023 to test teams for autonomous traversability on various kinds of terrains. At Stage 1, each robot runs the test field alone, solo start. In Stage 1+ which is about the mobility with inspection test at ICRA 2024 and IROS 2024, ICRA 2025, we witnessed more teams use autonomy and an exploration mission is still difficult for autonomous robots. As a next step, IROS 2025 QRC will move to Stage 2 where the multiple robot collaboration concept will be introduced. Teams may need to deal with collaborative tasks, dynamic obstacles, real-time perception, and planning in this stage. The QRC has great potential to lead the robotics community in technology advancement, inform researchers about the rigors required to reliably deploy into unstructured environments, and foster interactions with commercial manufacturers to create practical robotic systems. Examples of commercially available quadrupeds are shown in Fig. 1 (listed by weight). In addition to demonstrating the state-of-the science in legged robotics for unstructured environments, the QRC is helping to develop the standard test methods emergency responders and others around the world can use to objectively evaluate commercial robots, train with measures of remote operator proficiency, and compare results no matter where or when the evaluations are conducted. During scheduled down times in the IROS-2025 QRC, the test lanes can also provide a commercial robot demonstration area to highlight best-in-class performance throughout the industry. Consider this when selecting the location for the competition so the commercial booths are nearby and note that these same standard test methods are used by emergency responders to inform their purchasing decisions. Emergency responders like to ask the robot manufacturers in the booths to come to the arena so they can try the interface or watch the manufacturer’s “expert” operator do what they say the robot can do. This is a chance for them to see which systems are actually ready for purchase and deployment.
l Website
http://rise.skku.edu/iros2025qrc
l Contact
l Organizers
· Adam Jacoff
· Hyungpil Moon, Ph.D
· Soeren Schwertfeger, Ph.D
· Yangsung Lim, Mr.
Volting Cup
l Summary
The Volting Cup is a pioneering competition that blends robotics, art, and human performance to explore the frontiers of Embodied Intelligence. This concept emphasizes learning and decision-making through interaction with the physical world, pushing the boundaries of how humans and robots coexist and collaborate. The competition focuses on promoting exclusivity by encouraging participation from the disabled and elderly, while also serving as a creative platform for scientists, artists, and athletes. Participants are invited to design and perform artistic presentations that integrate robot systems, including human-robot dance, wheelchair dance, music and light interaction, physical drama, and musical theater. These performances aim to demonstrate the potential of robotics in adaptive sports and rehabilitation, as well as the emotional and expressive power of human-machine collaboration. The Volting Cup not only showcases technological innovation but also advocates for a society that is both intelligent and inclusive.
l Website
l Contact
Peng Wenbin (+86) 15327386737, 515214842@qq.com
l Organizers
· Prof. Eric Monacelli
· Prof. Hirata Yasuhisa
· Prof. Jianmin Wang associate Prof.
· Alex Caldas associate
· Prof. Hongyu Guan
· Dr. Baolin Peng
The Embodied Intelligence Challenge
l Summary
The Soft Robotics Embodied Intelligence Challenge invites teams to draw inspiration from advancements in the soft robotics field to explore how nature-inspired designs leverage body environment interactions to achieve efficient locomotion, whether by crawling, undulating, inching, rolling, or employing novel forms of movement. The principal aim of the competition is to design a low cost, bio-inspired, robotic system that exemplifies embodied intelligence through locomotion, challenging the state of the art in soft robotics. The challenge invites participants to study how organisms exploit compliance, distributed actuation, and material properties and translate these into an operational robot. The design should not only be functional but should also highlight the potential of soft robotics to navigate and adapt to complex environments. Furthermore, accessibility and inclusivity are key aspects of this competition, so solutions that utilize low-cost, easily fabricable materials and techniques will receive extra recognition by emphasizing affordability and reproducibility. Additional points will be awarded for innovative approaches that showcase “spectacular” behaviours arising from the interplay of materials, structure, and control.
l Website
http://embodied-intelligence-challenge.live/
l Contact
l Organizers
· Dr. Kyle L. Walker, EPFL
· Nana Obayashi, EPFL
· Dr. Alixander Partridge, The National Robotarium
· Maks Gepner, University of Edinburgh
· Mannus Schomaker, AMOLF
· Prof. Josie Hughes, EPFL
· Prof. Ankur Mehta, UCLA
Mecha Challenge
l Summary
In the "Iron Blood Mecha-Resource Competition Challenge" competition, participants have to design and operate their own robots and perform a series of tasks, including resource collection, transportation, processing and storage. This competition will provide participants with an opportunity to think about how technology can cope with the challenge of resource shortage in the future. The competition aims to stimulate the creativity of participants and find innovative ways to solve the problem of resource acquisition. This competition emphasizes robotics and demonstrates creativity, strategy and teamwork. The participating robots must be designed within the limited size, operated by the players remotely or automatically, competing for different resource props and sending them safely to the partition, while avoiding the interference of opponents and possible robot failures.
l Website
l Contact
Peng Wenbin (+86) 15327386737, 515214842@qq.com
l Organizers
· Dr. Baolin Peng
· Wenbin Peng
· Man Xu
· Bin Gong
· Jie Hong
Inquiry About Competitions
For any questions, please reach out to competition organizers listed in each section or contact the IROS 2025 committee at contact@iros2025.org.