AI 'joins the fight' in search and rescue - a real-life problem at Zalo AI Challenge 2025

The role of drones in emergency situations.

In 2017, the United States was hit by the devastating Hurricane Harvey, which struck Texas and Louisiana, causing property damage estimated at $125 billion and killing more than 100 people.

Following the storm, 43 organizations were granted special permits to operate drones in the area for various purposes, including search and rescue and area assessment. Using drones helps shorten insurance claim processing times for residents, as damage to homes can be assessed quickly and accurately.

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In Vietnam, natural disasters are becoming increasingly complex. In 2024, when it swept through the northern provinces, Typhoon Yagi caused serious damage to both lives and property. It is estimated that Typhoon Yagi caused over 81.5 trillion VND in damage, resulting in 344 deaths and missing persons. Post-typhoon rescue efforts faced many difficulties, especially in mountainous areas where flooding made it difficult for rescue teams to reach their targets in a timely manner. Under such extreme conditions, unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) are considered an effective solution in rescue and relief operations.

To enhance the effectiveness of drones in emergency situations and disaster response, helping to search for missing persons or important objects in harsh environments such as flooded areas, jungles, and storm-ravaged areas, the Zalo AI Challenge competition chose a theme related to drones, giving contestants the opportunity to apply AI technology to a practical problem that is important to Vietnamese society.

Enhancing the search and rescue capabilities of drones.

According to the organizers, "AeroEyes - Finding and Rescuing with AI-Powered Drones" is not just a competition for contestants; it represents a long-term prospect for the development of AI in Vietnam with practical applications.

As a company that has researched and developed many highly applicable AI products, Zalo hopes that this groundbreaking exam will make a positive contribution to search and rescue efforts in Vietnam.

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Two challenges for the Zalo AI Challenge 2025

The integration of AI with drone systems has opened up a breakthrough: these airborne "eyes" can scan tens of square kilometers in minutes, analyzing images in real time to detect people in distress, flooded areas, or cut-off roads. Instead of relying on manual observation in harsh conditions, AI helps rescue forces pinpoint locations more accurately, optimize resources, and significantly shorten response times.

Teams competing in the Zalo AI Challenge will build algorithms to control drones to perform a specific task in a real-world environment based on images captured by the drone – simulating a real -world search and rescue mission.

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Dr. Chau Thanh Duc - Deputy Head of the Organizing Committee of the Zalo AI Challenge 2025

In addition to senior staff at Zalo AI, contestants in the competition also received mentorship from leading AI experts, including: Dr. Chau Thanh Duc - Director of Research & Development, Zalo AI; Dr. Nguyen Truong Son - Director of Science , Zalo AI; Prof. Nguyen Le Minh - Head of the Machine Learning and Natural Language Understanding Laboratory, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST); Prof. Tran Thanh Long - Vice Dean, Director of Research, Department of Computer Science, University of Warwick, UK; Dr. Tran Minh Quan - Senior Technology Development Specialist, NVIDIA; Dr. Luong Viet Quoc - CEO of Realtime Robotics.

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The annual Zalo AI Challenge competition attracts a large number of young people passionate about AI technology.

The Zalo AI Challenge 2025 exam continues the impressive artificial intelligence challenges that Zalo AI Challenge has previously offered to contestants. In 2023, Zalo AI Challenge presented three challenges: Elementary Maths Solving - building an AI model to solve elementary school math problems according to the Vietnamese education curriculum standards, Advertising Banner Generation - AI automatically designing advertising banners based on given descriptive information, and Background Music Generation - developing AI to create background music based on requirements for melody, instruments, and genre.

Young people passionate about artificial intelligence can find information about the competition and register directly at the website: challenge.zalo.ai

The Zalo AI Challenge is an annual competition organized by Zalo with the aim of promoting AI research on a large scale, encouraging talented young people in the field of AI to participate in solving practical problems to bring artificial intelligence to serve human life. First held in 2018, the competition has since attracted thousands of teams from both within and outside Vietnam each year to test their skills and prove their abilities.

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