WorldSkills Autonomous Mobile Robot Contest Opens in Shanghai With Harder New Format

The autonomous mobile robot project of the 48th WorldSkills Competition opened on September 23 at the National Exhibition and Convention Center in Shanghai, with competitors from 18 countries and regions including China, Brazil, South Korea and India. The 48th WorldSkills Competition is being held in Shanghai from September 22 to 27, with 1,385 competitors from 68 countries and regions.

The project runs for four days, from September 23 to 26. On the opening day, teams assembled their robots, building the wheeled chassis in the morning and attaching the robotic arm to the chassis in the afternoon, before moving on to module challenges covering prototype design, navigation and positioning, visual recognition, testing and troubleshooting, and integrated debugging.

This year's format has changed notably. Previously all teams competed in the same module on the same day, but this edition introduces rotation in units of four teams. The competition has also removed fixed scene themes. Teams draw one of four chassis types on the morning of the competition, and for grasping tasks, only the shape outline, approximate size and weight of objects are revealed in advance, making the contest significantly harder than previous editions.

According to Zeng Zhiwei, head coach of the Shanghai training team for the project, the contest simulates application scenarios such as restaurants and kitchens, which are collectively classified as service robots, and the assessment closely matches the real needs of the service robot industry. China's team has won this project three consecutive times, from the 45th to the 47th WorldSkills Competition.