RIT Open Community eXperiment 2025
As remote sensing technologies evolve, high-quality, ground-truthed datasets remain critical for research and education.
There is a continual need for well ground-truthed remote sensing data collections. As new modalities, platforms, and sensors are deployed, it is important to develop data sets with ground-truth for research and education purposes.
In the spring of 2024, RIT began planning for a major data collection activity coined the RIT Open Community eXperiment (ROCX) with the following objectives:
- Acquire remote sensing data for research purposes from a variety of sensor modalities and platforms coordinated over a defined area for a defined period.
- Include a range of ground object deployments and ground-truth collection activities proposed and carried out by research experiment Principal Investigators.
- Process and distribute analysis-ready data sets on an open-access data repository for use by the general remote sensing research community.
- Disseminate research results from the collection through special sessions at major conferences and peer-reviewed journal special issues.
The activity culminated in an intense experiment period from September 4–22, 2025. From June 2024 through September 2025, 28 online Working Group meetings were held, with participants sharing ideas and plans for the collection. Two open periods were held in late 2024 and early 2025 to solicit proposals for data collections and ground experiments.
During the experiment period, 75 participants from 24 organizations and six countries came to the Tait Preserve to set up ground experiments and collect data. Data were acquired for 19 ground experiments by 14 ground instruments, eight UAV platforms, two airplanes, and seven satellite platforms. The table below provides a summary of the data collections during ROCX 2025.
ROCX 2025 was supported by Platinum sponsors IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society and Bronze sponsors Matter Intelligence and Spectra Vista Corporation. Many thanks to these organizations for their support.
NASA Awards RIT Funding
NASA has awarded Rochester Institute of Technology's Digital Imaging and Remote Sensing Laboratory (DIRS) a three-year grant to host a community-driven remote sensing field campaign and publicly disseminate the resulting datasets to researchers, educators, and students worldwide.
The award recognizes the growing need for high-quality, well-characterized remote sensing datasets as new sensors, platforms, and measurement technologies continue to emerge. Ground-truthed observations are essential for validating remote sensing products, developing new algorithms, and advancing scientific understanding across a broad range of environmental and Earth observation applications.
Join the Community
Interested in ROCX updates or joining the Working Group? Fill out this general interest survey.
Help shape ROCX 2027 and beyond by attending the ROCX Workshop on Friday, October 23rd, 2026 at RIT’s Tait Preserve or on-line. Registration required.
Data & Experiment Overviews
Browse the dataset overviews below to learn more about the data collected during ROCX 2025.
At this ROCX2025 landing page you will find a collection of ESRI storymaps that guide users through:
- Experiments with sample data and initial results.
- Data providers summary of collected data.
Additional overviews for each experiment and data are currently being compiled and will be added to the collection as they become available.
Support Opportunities
Support This Project
Every gift makes a difference and helps us continue this important work. Help make ROCX Next a success! Visit our donation page to contribute.
Want to know more? You can find additional information about sponsorship here.
Publicity and News Stories
“RIT hosts community remote sensing experiment” RIT News 18 September 2025
“Naval Research Lab Sharpens Navy's Sights With Domain-Centric Path for Smarter Sensing” 13 January 2026.
“Science without borders” RIT University Magazine Spring 2026
Publications
R. Haelterman, C. Hamesse, H. De Meulemeester, S. Lekhak, and E. J. Ientilucci, “ROCX mine detection campaign: Platform trade-offs and multi-spectral, multi-view sensor fusion,” in Mine Action 2026: Book of Papers 2026, Split, Croatia, Mar. 2026, pp. 56–59. [Online].
Kerekes, J.P., N. G. Raqueno, and D. N. Riley, “Rochester Institute of Technology’s Open Community eXperiment (ROCX) 2025,” in IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 139-143, April 2026, doi: 10.1109/MGRS.2026.3651412.
Kerekes, J.P. and N. G. Raqueno, “ROCX 2025: planning and execution of a major community remote sensing data collection,” Proc. SPIE 14025, Algorithms, Technologies, and Applications for Multispectral and Hyperspectral Imaging XXXII, 1402506 (9 Jun 2026).
Ito, G., M. Rios, K. Doctor, S. Ramsey, J. Figge, and Q. Huynk, “The Mélange Experiment at ROCX 2025,” Proc. of IGARSS 2026 (available later in 2026).
Doctor, K. and S. Ramsey, “CHROMA: Bridging the Data Gap for Domain-Centric AI in Complex Aquatic Environments,” Proc. of IGARSS 2026 (available later in 2026).
Hampton, A., K. Chhapariya, Y. Itoh, A. Zare, and M. Parente, “Introducing a Ground-truthed Multi-resolution Drone-based Hyperspectral Dataset for Unmixing Tasks,” Proc. of IGARSS 2026 (available later in 2026).
Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition Program
Learn more about the NASA Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition Program (CSDA) Program.
Check back periodically for updates to this site. Last Update: September 29, 2026.