The First WARA Robotics Mobile Manipulation Challenge - Lessons Learned

The first WARA Robotics Mobile Manipulation Challenge, held in December 2024 at ABB Corporate Research in Vasteras, Sweden, addressed the automation of task-intensive and repetitive manual labor in laboratory environments — specifically the transport and cleaning of glassware. Designed in collaboration with AstraZeneca, the challenge invited academic teams to develop autonomous robotic systems capable of navigating human-populated lab spaces and performing complex manipulation tasks, such as loading items into industrial dishwashers. This paper presents an overview of the challenge setup, its industrial motivation, and the four distinct approaches proposed by the participating teams. We summarize lessons learned from this edition and propose improvements in design to enable a more effective second iteration to take place in 2025. The initiative bridges an important gap in effective academia-industry collaboration within the domain of autonomous mobile manipulation systems by promoting the development and deployment of applied robotic solutions in real-world laboratory contexts.