The 2nd Kibo-RPC Preliminary Round was held in Each Country/Region

There were total of 905 students with 286 teams from 11 countries/regions of Kibo-RPC participants. Table 1 shows the number of participating teams from each country/region, and Table 2 shows the number of participants by nationality. Regarding nationality, students from 19 countries/regions applied. We are honored that so many people participated.

In the Preliminary Round, the POCs ran the programs created by the participants under eight different condition settings. Each setting was scored, and each team’s lowest score from the eight settings was used as their official score.

Preliminary Rounds of the Kibo-RPC event were held in each country/region from the end of June to the middle of July 2021. The Point of Contact (POC) in each country/region held a unique Preliminary Round, and there were many teams that scored so high. They reported that it was very competitive and that they had a lot of fun with the participants.

Below in alphabetical order is an introduction of the Preliminary Round event for each country.

Australia hosted the preliminary round with the One Giant Leap Australia Foundation (OGLA) as the POC, supported by the Australian Space Agency and the Office of the NSW Chief Scientist & Engineer. The preliminary round was held on July 9. Due to COVID lockdowns in many areas of Australia, this was held virtually via Zoom. 5 teams out of 15 teams could manage to provide an entry on the JAXA simulation site. The winning team, Dream Rover, was composed of elementary and junior high school students from Sydney who won the competition with an A score, while most of the teams were university students from other states throughout Australia. In an interview, the team said that they were very enthusiastic about this competition because they are interested in deepening their understanding of space and robotics.

Bangladesh was not able to hold a Preliminary Round event prior to the programming skills round on July 18 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, yet, the POC conducted a simulation run in advance and notified the participants of the national winning team. The Bangladesh online Preliminary Round event was held later was a great success. Those guest speakers from Bangladesh, Japan, Costa Rica, and the United States participated online. In addition to the first place already announced for the preliminary Round, the top three teams received awards.

The Preliminary Round event in Indonesia was held online. The Indonesian Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (LAPAN) had pre-run the program with the participants in the simulation environment prior to the event and showed a video at the event. After the video, the teams and the LAPAN satellites were introduced, and then the JAXA staff gave a talk on Kibo-ABC. At the end of the event, the simulation results were replayed on the video to explain the simulated trajectories, and the top three teams were awarded, with the winning team being Cepheus-2.

The Japan Preliminary Round was conducted as a remote, real-time event, and participants had to go online. The participants’ programs were simulated in advance by JAXA. On the day of the event, videos of the results were played, and the rankings were announced. At the Preliminary Round, a lecture was given by Mr. KAWAI Yuta, an officer at JAXA Human Spaceflight Technology Center. After that, JAXA Astronaut YUI Kimiya and Professor NAKASUKA Shinichi of the University of Tokyo explained the simulation results, and then the rankings were announced. The ranking result was 3rd place ‘Team TUT -Project YashiroAzuki v2.0-‘, in 2nd place was ‘ASTROSWALLOWS2’, and 1st place went to ‘Cosmic Jellyfish’. After the event, an online social event was held where students asked many questions to Astronaut YUI Kimiya and Professor NAKASUKA Shinichi. Students also asked each other about programming, leading to a lively discussion.

The Preliminary Round in Singapore was held on 10th July as an online event, and three teams were able to submit APKs to compete. The winner was Descendant of the Sun from Nanyang Technological University (NTU).

The Preliminary Round event in Taiwan was held online. The results of both the simulation and presentation session, which is unique to Taiwan, were combined and evaluated to determine the rankings. During the Preliminary Round, the top three teams were announced, and GeminiPYTW was the winner. Most of the teams achieved Class A, the highest level, for their simulation results. In Taiwan study sessions were held for participants prior to the preliminary round, and the participants' efforts led to this result. Teams that participated in the preliminary round made a video introducing their teams and explaining their program innovations. See Table 3.

In the second Preliminary Round, the participants of the 20 teams were interviewed, and together with the scores from the simulation, the winning team was determined. The National Science and Technology Development Agency of Thailand (NSTDA) hosted the second qualifying round on July 14, with guest speaker JAXA Bangkok Office Director ONO Atsushi. At the ceremony, Indentation Error won the Grand Prize, and various other awards were also presented, as shown in the table below.

Unfortunately, because of the lockdown in Nepal and Vietnam due to COVID-19, the participants were not ready and bowed out from the programming skills round.

The winning team in each country and region received a ticket to participate in the Programming Skills Round and the Final Round. In the Programming Skills Round, contestants compete for their programming skills in a simulation environment. In the Final Round, the teams will install their codes on the Astrobee, which is actually used on the ISS in orbit, and compete for speed and accuracy. The finalists will modify their codes to make them better for the Final Round.

Even for the teams that unfortunately did not make it to the final round, we hope that they will apply what they learned and experienced on this occasion to their future activities in various fields.