The team from the Automation and Robotics Laboratory at the University of Minho’s School of Engineering secured the world runner-up title in the domestic service robot category (RoboCup@Home) at the RoboCup 2026 championship in Incheon, South Korea. The competition brought together the world’s top 24 teams, with Germany, South Korea, Japan, and Thailand also represented in the final.

The performance of the team’s robot, CHARMIE, consistently kept it among the top three contenders throughout a week of demanding challenges, which included human-robot interactions, object manipulation, general service tasks, unloading the washing machine, restaurant service, and house cleaning. In the final, CHARMIE demonstrated the quality and robustness of the hardware and software, all of which were developed entirely by the university’s researchers and students.

“This result fills UMinho, Guimarães, and Portugal with pride. It may still be difficult to grasp the magnitude of this achievement when comparing our resources to those of other top teams—most of which have been competing for years, possess large budgets, use modern commercial robotic platforms, and even have backup robots, giving them the advantage of working in parallel,” explains coordinating professor Fernando Ribeiro, from the Department of Industrial Electronics at the University of Minho’s School of Engineering. “CHARMIE, on the other hand, is a platform designed and built from scratch—the fruit of many hours of research, development, testing, and the dedication of a group that never stopped believing it was possible to compete at the highest level,” he adds.

The Portuguese team—which received numerous congratulations from fellow competitors throughout the day—also includes students Tiago Ribeiro and António Ribeiro (PhD in Electronics), Pedro Moniz (Master’s in Mechatronics), Tiago Remelhe, Carolina Souto, and Carolina Lopes (Master’s in Electronics), as well as Inês Garcia (guest lecturer in Electronics). The group has been documenting their journey on Instagram and Facebook and is set to return to Portugal on July 10.

Fernando Ribeiro was also recently recognized by the International RoboCup Federation, receiving a certificate for his dedication to the initiative; he served as vice-president from 2018 to 2022 and as a trustee from 2014 to 2024. UMinho has participated in RoboCup since 1999, consistently involving students and garnering various awards. Over the years, the team has tackled challenges such as robotic soccer (Middle Size League) and humanoid robotic soccer, and—since 2023—RoboCup@Home, a competition that, beyond the event itself, aims to help develop assistive robots that are increasingly intelligent and useful to people. The Department of Industrial Electronics at the University of Minho’s School of Engineering joins in this recognition, congratulating Professor Fernando Ribeiro and the entire team for their dedication, commitment, and remarkable performance in South Korea—an achievement that brings prestige to the University of Minho and highlights the excellence of the work being done in the fields of robotics and automation.

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+Info: RoboCup 2026