From October 16th to 18th, 2026, the Institute of Control Theory and Systems Engineering (RST) at TU Dortmund University organized its third RST Hackathon under the motto “The Repair Awakens.” Between Friday evening and Sunday noon, 24 students from computer science, electrical engineering, automation and robotics took on an exciting robotics challenge at TU Dortmund University’s Institute for Robotics Research (IRF).
The mission scenario: Repair humanity’s most important satellite in space, using a robotic arm before it burns up in the Earth’s atmosphere. The challenge: The students had to solve diverse tasks including sensing and actuation, while dealing with communication delays between mission control on Earth and the satellite in space. These delays introduced additional complexity, requiring the teams to account for communication latency when designing and implementing their solutions. A jury from industry and academia rated the teams’ solutions and determined the winners of the challenge, before the event ended with a barbecue.
Back on Earth, researchers from RST involved in the 6GEM+/GEM-X project also investigate the challenges of individual communication parameters. Instead of robots in space, they work on automotive teleoperation and collaborative perception for future mobile networks. The communication latency model used in the hackathon shared similarities with RST’s collaborative perception demonstrator, which was presented at the Berlin 6G Conference in September.
The hackathon was made possible through the generous support of sponsors from industry and academia: Analog Devices, adesso, GdF Gesellschaft der Freunde der TU Dortmund, and Elmos Stiftung.
