Future Skills Team Challenge becomes a development platform for new start-up solutions

The Future Skills Team Challenge 2021 took place from 5 to 8 December at the National Research Nuclear University (MEPhI), bringing together 30 teams of students from 20 universities across the country. 

Future Skills Team Challenge is an experimental competition format, first tested by WorldSkills Russia at the Archipelago 2121 crash course. Its expanded version was later used at the Digital Skills 2021 competition and the final version – in the first round of finals at the 5th WorldSkills Russia National Competition. 

The competition featured six challenges based on Future Skills: (1) Digital Capabilities for business, (2) Digital Factory, (3) AR/VR, (4) Electronic Device development, (5) Engineering Mindset. Karakuri and (6) Creative RnD.  

The WorldSkills system has traditionally examined the skill level of a professional, which is assessed and scored by experts through competitions and training. However, the tasks in WorldSkills competitions are presented as a model of production tasks.

"The transformations in the global economy and labour market are creating complex and increasingly difficult challenges. One cannot tackle these challenges alone – they require teamwork, with each team member possessing a specific set of skills. The most in-demand skills were identified following the results of the international research project Future Skills for the 2020s: A New Hope, conducted by WorldSkills Russia and Global Education Futures with the contribution of 800 experts from 49 countries. These included not only engineering and technical skills, but also the so-called soft skills – communication, cognitive skills, presentation skills, entrepreneurial skills, teamwork, and the newly-emerging green skills. The latter skills will eventually be applied to all areas of production and industry," – stated Ekaterina Loshkareva, Deputy Director General for Research and Development of Educational Organizations at WorldSkills.

To identify and foster new skills, WorldSkills Russia developed and ran the Future Skills Team Challenge competition. Its distinctive feature is that participants solved real technological and business tasks offered by the partner companies of the Challenge. Longstanding experience of WorldSkills Russia in skills development and assessment allowed to incorporate this method into the soft skills assessment at the Challenges, as well as to demonstrate the ability to design viable technological solutions as early as at the competition stage. 

One such example was the Virtual and augmented reality challenge, where the Tubot start-up of TechnoSpark Group commissioned the participants to develop a viable product. Tubot builds robots to inspect complex pipe sections for faults and defects. These robots are used in various industries, including the oil and gas industry, nuclear power industry and chemical industry. Moreover, the company provides pipe cleaning services, real-time telemetry and video recording services.

The task presented by the start-up was to develop an idea for a virtual and augmented reality application, which could then be incorporated into its technological process. An expert from Tubot contributed to the problem statement and evaluation. During this challenge, participants had the opportunity to communicate directly with the start-up, ask questions and quickly receive answers, which helped them to fine-tune the solution to the start-up's needs.

The prototypes that the teams built over the two days proved to be efficient and practical. Already at this stage, Tubot became interested in refining, purchasing and later integrating the solutions developed by the student teams into the functionality of its robot.

"Tubot, a TechnoSpark start-up, showcased its pipe inspection robot to Future Skills Team Challenge 2021 and acted as a commissioning partner in the AR/VR challenge. During the competition, the start-up confirmed that it is possible to develop a virtual simulator for the robot operator and create VR/AR reports for customers. In just a couple of days, we saw several prototypes of such solutions and will continue to work with the developers. Future Skills Team Challenge has proved to be an effective format, and we plan to send several start-ups with technology tasks to the competition next year," stated Oleg Lysak, CEO of TechnoSpark. 

The next stage in the development of this format will be to expand the list of skills and introduce new challenges, as well as to bring in new partners who are ready to commission solutions for real-world production tasks.