2nd RoCo Challenge @ IROS 2026

What is RoCo?

The RoCo (Robotic Collaborative) Assembly Challenge focuses on evaluating Physical AI agents across four core dimensions:

• Physics Understanding: Grasping object properties, spatial relationships, and real-world dynamics.
• Dexterous Manipulation: Handling objects with high precision and control.
• Long-Horizon Reasoning: Reasoning about multi-step tasks, managing dependencies, and recovering from failures.
• Generalization: Adapting learned skills to novel tasks and environments with robust flexibility.

Tasks

The 2nd RoCo Challenge adopts two benchmarking tasks:

• Industrial Board Assembly requires participants to assemble a task board by performing industrial level operations, such as connector insertion, wire routing, screw tightening, and battery assembly, etc. More details can be found in the Industrial Board Assembly Overview.
• Brick Assembly requires participants to construct customized structures using a set of LEGO bricks. More details can be found in the Brick Assembly Overview.

Choose Your Task

Teams will choose and compete in one task this year.

How to Participate

The challenge is divided into a Simulation Phase and an Onsite Phase.

• Register: Fill out the Sign-Up Form with your task preference. We will reach out to confirm your placement.
• Submit (By June 22): Submit your solution proposal. Including simulation results is highly recommended to strengthen your application!
• Compete in Simulation (Now – August): Develop and submit simulation results throughout the simulation competition period.
• Compete Onsite (September 2026): Onsite finalists announced on August 31 will be invited to the onsite finals at IROS 2026 in Pittsburgh, USA.

Awards

We’re excited to announce a $20K+ (Tentative) prize pool for the 2026 RoCo Challenge, made possible by our generous sponsors!

The top three teams in every track will walk away with cash prizes, and all remaining onsite finalists will receive in-kind awards.