🚀 Introduction

Welcome to the GhostSwarm Hackathon — a high-stakes, technically demanding competition at the intersection of robotics, AI, and multi-agent systems. Your challenge: design and deploy intelligent, cooperative robotic agents that can navigate and act in denied or adversarial environments, where GPS, communication, and centralized planning are unreliable or unavailable.

This isn’t just another robotics hackathon. GhostSwarm is designed for engineers, researchers, and students who want to push the boundaries of what’s possible with ROS 2, multi-agent coordination, and real-world autonomy. If you’re ready to solve problems inspired by disaster response, military robotics, or planetary exploration — this is your arena.

🛠️ Tools and Technologies

To compete in GhostSwarm, you’ll need to work with the following tools:

🤖 Core Robotics Framework

  • ROS 2 (Galactic, Humble, or Iron recommended)

  • Fast DDS / CycloneDDS for real-time communication

🌍 Simulation Environments

  • Gazebo Fortress / Ignition

  • Webots (optional alternative)

  • Custom adversarial world plugins/maps encouraged

🧠 AI & Perception

  • PyTorch / TensorFlow (for reinforcement learning or computer vision)

  • OpenCV, YOLOv8, U-Net, or ViT for scene analysis

  • Optional: RLlib / CleanRL / Stable-Baselines3 for MARL

📦 Deployment Tools

  • Docker for portability

  • GitHub Actions for CI/CD

  • Rviz2, rqt_graph, and ros2doctor for debugging

đź’ˇ Inspiration

GhostSwarm is inspired by real-world robotics challenges that demand resilience, intelligence, and collaboration under stress:

  • DARPA Subterranean Challenge

  • Multi-Agent Search & Rescue in collapsed buildings or underground

  • Autonomous military swarms in GPS-denied zones

  • Space robotics for lunar/Martian cave exploration

  • Decentralized disaster relief in unstable environments

These are the environments where centralized systems fail — and where your intelligent swarm could thrive.