# Swarm Drone Challenge 2026 — 5 drone swarm open-sourced, uROS, ROS2

**URL:** <https://discourse.openrobotics.org/t/swarm-drone-challenge-2026-5-drone-swarm-open-sourced-uros-ros2/55467>\
**Category:** Projects\
**Created:** [June 13, 2026, 4:51pm UTC](https://discourse.openrobotics.org/t/swarm-drone-challenge-2026-5-drone-swarm-open-sourced-uros-ros2/55467 "2026-06-13T16:51:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![machmind-dev](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/user_avatar/discourse.openrobotics.org/machmind-dev/32/34291_2.png) [@machmind-dev](https://discourse.openrobotics.org/u/machmind-dev)\
**Post date:** [June 13, 2026, 4:51pm UTC](https://discourse.openrobotics.org/t/swarm-drone-challenge-2026-5-drone-swarm-open-sourced-uros-ros2/55467/1 "2026-06-13T16:51:33Z")

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Hi all — we open-sourced a ROS 2–based autonomous drone swarm, and thought the coordination architecture might be of interest here.

We built a 5-drone swarm for the Swarm Drone Challenge 2026 (a capture-the-flag scenario) and finished 4th of six finalists. The whole thing is coordinated from a ROS 2 ground station:

- A deterministic **commander** node assigns each drone a role (Executor / Seeker / Leader) and streams waypoints to per-drone control topics (`/gcs/drone_<id>/control`) in the arena frame.
- Onboard, each drone runs **micro-ROS on an ESP32-S3** as the bridge into the ROS 2 graph, then talks **MAVLink** to a PX4 flight controller in offboard mode.
- A second MCU — an **ESP32-P4** — handles onboard vision (ArUco marker detection at 320×240 plus ToF obstacle sensing), with no companion SBC.

So the ROS 2 side owns coordination and tasking; the MCUs own real-time comms and perception.

Technical Report: [drone-swarm-challenge-2026/docs/Technical Report for Finals Submission.pdf at main · machmind-dev/drone-swarm-challenge-2026 · GitHub](https://github.com/machmind-dev/drone-swarm-challenge-2026/blob/main/docs/Technical%20Report%20for%20Finals%20Submission.pdf)

Everything’s open — ROS 2 ground station, firmware, hardware, development photos/videos:

> **[GitHub - machmind-dev/drone-swarm-challenge-2026: Source Code of team Mach Mind -...](https://github.com/machmind-dev/drone-swarm-challenge-2026)**
>
> Source Code of team Mach Mind - https://swarmdronechallenge.digital/

 ![Screenshot_2026-06-07_22-23-24](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/uploads/ros/original/3X/c/2/c256b1a71905c063fa4b7c63b4b04705f55b5456.png)

 ![all_drones_performing_connectivity_test](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/uploads/ros/original/3X/b/4/b46d59e2f866a18ffc42717acb55ecf0292de4fb.jpeg)