Top international robotics teams gathered at CUHK last month to put their innovations to test at the 5th ATEC Competition, the world’s first robotics contest themed around “real-world extreme challenges”. Follow the action as these robots step out of the lab and into complex, unpredictable environments to perform a wide range of tasks.
ATEC was organised by CUHK and co-hosted by the Advanced Technology Exploration Community (ATEC), Ant Group, Peking University and Beijing Normal University.
Photo: Yau Hung-kee
The competition features four real-world tasks, including “sorting waste” which requires robots to identify scattered rubbish and pick it up.
After picking up the rubbish, robots sort it into the correct category.
The second task, “watering flowers”, requires robots to handle a watering can, turn a tap on and off, fetch water and irrigate plants.
A robotic dog leaps over unevenly spaced wooden planks in the “bridge crossing” task.
A humanoid bipedal robot is set to take the same bridge crossing mission.
Guest officiating at the ATEC 2025 opening ceremony: (from left) Professor Irwin King, ATEC 2025 Organising Committee Chairman and CUHK’s Vice-President (Education); Dr He Zhengyu, President of Ant Research; Professor Liu Yunhui, ATEC 2025 Steering Committee Chairman and Director of CUHK’s T Stone Robotics Institute; Professor Xu Ke, Founder and Chairman of ATEC, and Vice Director of the Department of Computer Science and Technology at Tsinghua University.
Team wongtsai from Zhejiang University win the championship.
CUHK students form the team CUMAE: (from left) Claudia Chan from the Faculty of Medicine, Albert Leung from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and Aaron Fung from the Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering.
Schoolchildren watch the robots in action up close.
