The Vertex Swarm Challenge 2026

Design and simulate a swarm of at least 5 heterogeneous robots and/or drones that can collaboratively explore, map and coordinate search-and-rescue tasks in a disaster environment where conventional connectivity is unreliable or unavailable, using Gazebo or Webots as the simulation environment.

Teams must use Vertex 2.0 to coordinate a swarm of at least 5 simulated robots and/or drones, potentially from different vendors or configurations, operating in a communications-degraded or blackout scenario. The swarm should demonstrate coordinated behaviors such as area exploration, target discovery, task allocation, or role hand-off without relying on centralized cloud services.

Implementations should be demonstrated in a simulation environment such as Gazebo or Webots. The focus is on peer-to-peer coordination logic, not perception accuracy, mapping quality, or SLAM performance.

Build a low-latency safety coordination layer in Rust using Vertex's Rust crate that can drive a swarm into a predefined safe state in response to a fault signal, with end-to-end reaction on the order of ~30 ms in simulation.

Teams must implement a minimal swarm of at least three simulated robots or nodes that exchange periodic heartbeat messages. When a fault condition is detected by any one node, a fault signal must propagate through the swarm, causing all nodes to enter a predefined safe state (e.g., stop, freeze, or idle) within a tightly bounded time window (targeting <30 ms end-to-end in simulation).

This track is focused on coordination latency, fault propagation, and deterministic behavior in simulation. It is not about certifying real-world safety systems or complying with industrial safety standards.

This is the open innovation track. Use Vertex 2.0 to design any multi-agent system — robots, AMRs, drones, or IoT nodes — where peer-to-peer coordination enables intelligent collective behavior. While hybrid cloud-edge architectures are allowed, systems that demonstrate strong decentralized coordination and resilience will score higher.

Teams are free to define their own use case, provided it showcases peer discovery, state sharing, and coordinated decision-making using Vertex. Scenarios may involve robots, drones, IoT systems, or other autonomous agents operating as a coordinated group.

While hybrid setups are permitted, submissions that demonstrate continued operation during partial failures, degraded connectivity, or temporary loss of centralized services will score higher for technical complexity and robustness.