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Fakultät für Elektrotechnik und Informationstechnik
Studierende sitzt am Arbeitsplatz und schaut auf den Laptop. © Aliona Kardash​/​TU Dortmund

Radio Degradation Challenge powered by ComNets at the RoboCup Rescue World Open 2026 in Incheon, Korea

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© ComNets 2026
Radio Degradation Units (vSTING) assembled and ready at RoboCup World Open 2026 in Incheon Korea.
At this year’s RoboCup Rescue World Open in Incheon, Korea, the vSTING solution developed by ComNets was once again deployed to support the Radio Degradation Challenge. By providing controlled and reproducible artificial network degradation, vSTING enables realistic testing conditions for mobile rescue robots. The technology also contributed to the success of this year’s winning team, Team Dynamics from FH Wels. By setting up its own Radio Degradation Unit before the competition using the open-source vSTING repository, the team was able to prepare under realistic degraded network conditions and fine-tune its system for the challenges.

Since 2022, vSTING has been used as a Radio Degradation Unit within the RoboCup Rescue competition. Teams can earn bonus points by successfully completing tasks while their robots are exposed to emulated effects of real-world wireless communication impairments. These additional challenges affect the robots during tasks designed to test their mobility, maneuverability, and dexterity.
The network degradation provided by vSTING [1] enables the controlled and reproducible application of communication constraints such as additional latency, reduced bandwidth, and packet loss on a communication link. In this way, vSTING can replicate network impairments that may occur during rescue missions in disaster scenarios.

This year’s winning team, Team Dynamics from FH Wels, prepared extensively by setting up its own Radio Degradation Unit before the competition, following the instructions provided in the open-source repository. This allowed the team to fine-tune its system under degraded network conditions and ultimately achieve strong performance throughout the challenges.

© RoboCup Rescue 2026
RoboCup Rescue World Open 2026 Champion, Teams Dynamics from FH Wells in Upper Austria, trained at home with a Radio Degradation Unit and earned bonus points from the Radio Degradation Challenge.

Out of the 23 teams participating in this year’s competition, 11 teams accepted the additional challenge of operating under radio degradation. The semi-finals and finals showed particularly strong adoption, with radio degradation being used almost consistently. All of the top three teams in the final chose to compete under degraded communication conditions. This represents the highest participation rate since ComNets first introduced the Radio Degradation Challenge [2] at the RoboCup Rescue World Open. The increased adoption demonstrates a growing awareness of the role of network communication in robotics, especially in realistic rescue mission scenarios.

This year, the Radio Degradation Units were operated by the RoboCup Rescue League, with ComNets providing remote support.

RoboCup Rescue League Webseite: https://rrl.robocup.org/

 

Sources:

[1] M. Patchou, J. Tiemann, C. Arendt, S. Böcker, C. Wietfeld, "Realtime Wireless Network Emulation for Evaluation of Teleoperated Mobile Robots", In 2022 IEEE International Conference on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics (SSRR), Sevilla, Spain, November 2022.  [pdf] [Code] [Details]

[2] M. Patchou, S. Böcker, C. Wietfeld, "The Radio Degradation Challenge: Fostering a Joint System Design of Robotics and Communication for Better Application Robustness", in IEEE International Symposium on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics (SSRR), New York, USA, November 2024.  [pdf] [Details]