Application Results for the 6th Kibo Robot Programming Challenge

Experiment at Kibo
Kibo Utilization Office for Asia (KUOA)

Summary

The 6th Kibo Robot Programming Challenge (Kibo-RPC)*1 hosted by JAXA has closed its call for teams. Thank you very much for all the applications!

Participating Team Application Results

A total of 13 countries, regions, and organizations (Table 1) from Kibo-ABC*² member countries and region, the United States, and the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) participated in this year's competition, with a record number of 738 teams and 3,082 applicants.

In addition, students from 25 countries outside of the Kibo-RPC participating countries/regions are participating in the program through the UNOOSA framework. (Table 2)

The Japan domestic preliminary round was held on July 5th as a hybrid event, both at the Tsukuba Space Center and online. The results were announced on social media, the JAXA website, and other platforms.

Table 1. Participants from Kibo-ABC member countries/regions and from the U.S. and UNOOSA

Country/Region (in alphabetical order)	Teams
Australia	9
Bangladesh	130
Indonesia	28
Japan	33*
Malaysia	90
Nepal	6
Philippines	27
Singapore	21
Taiwan	77
Thailand	208
United States of America	56
UNOOSA	51
Vietnam	2
Total	738 Teams

*Beginners Course included

Table 2. Number of participants in UNOOSA international slots by country

Country/Region (in alphabetical order)		No. of Participants
Asia/Middle East	Bahrain	8
	Bhutan	51
	China	3
	India	21
	Iran	10
	Iraq	3
	Jordan	4
	Pakistan	11
	Sri Lanka	4
	Syria	1
Africa	Egypt	1
	Kenya	7
	Lesotho	4
	Morocco	3
	Nigeria	6
	Sudan	1
	Tunisia	4
Central and South America	Bolivia	6
	Colombia	12
	Costa Rica	5
	Guatemala	11
	Haiti	4
	Mexico	45
	Peru	6
Europe	Serbia	4
Total	25 Countries	235 participants

Figure 1. Age distribution of all participants

Preliminary and Final Competitions

Participating teams developed an APK (Android Application Package) and designed to control NASA's Astrobee, a free-flying space robot on the International Space Station (ISS), for their respective national, regional, or organizational preliminary rounds.

The deadline for APK submission was June 19th. Only teams that submitted their APKs were eligible to advance to these preliminary rounds, which were held across various countries, regions, and organizations from June 21st to July 7th. The winning teams proceed to the in-orbit finals, which are scheduled to take place on the ISS around fall.

Schedule

May 26, 2025: Application Deadline
June 19, 2025: APK submission deadline
June 21 to July 7, 2025: Preliminary competitions for each country, region, and organization (using the JAXA simulation environment)
Fall 2025: In-orbit Final Competition

Special Site

The 6th Kibo-RPC Official Website

*1 Kibo-RPC
Kibo-RPC is a collaborative effort between JAXA and NASA based on Japan-US cooperation through the Japan-US Open Platform Partnership Program (JP-US OP3) to promote Kibo utilization in the Asia-Pacific region and contribute to the SDGs (Goal 4: Quality Education for All,　Goal 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure). This is an activity that JAXA and NASA are working on in cooperation. Through this activity, we provide students in the region with educational opportunities on robot operation and computer programming in space.
Participating countries, regions and organizations in the 6th Kibo-RPC (in alphabetical order): Australia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Nepal, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, USA, UNOOSA, Vietnam

*2 Kibo-ABC
Kibo-ABC is an initiative within the Asia-Pacific Regional Space Agency Forum (APRSAF) to promote space environment utilization in the region. This competition is one of the activities of the APRSAF, and participants are required to apply through space agencies in their respective countries, regions or UNOOSA.

Kibo

Experiment at Kibo

KUOA

Kibo Utilization Office for Asia

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