Traditional intangible cultural heritage meets artificial intelligence as Beijing's "First-Class Craftsmanship" exhibition area debuts at the WorldSkills Expo

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Beijing News (Reporter Xu Yanlin) On September 22, the 48th WorldSkills Competition (hereinafter referred to as the "WorldSkills Competition") opened in Shanghai. As an important part of the competition, the WorldSkills Expo also welcomed its first batch of visitors on September 23. In Hall 5.2 of the National Exhibition and Convention Center, the Beijing exhibition area appeared under the theme of "First-Class Craftsmanship, Skills Creating the Future." A humanoid robot explained the cloisonné production process, dexterous hands played a fun game of rock-paper-scissors with visitors, and a space capsule robot handed out cups of coffee one after another. Traditional craftsmanship and artificial intelligence blended and interacted, showing visitors the craftsmanship and new quality strength of Beijing in the new era.

The Beijing exhibition area of the WorldSkills Expo is divided into four major sections: smart guide, smart manufacturing, smart training, and smart living. Photo by Beijing News reporter Xu Yanlin

Walking into the Beijing exhibition area, the dexterous hands in the smart training section attracted visitors' attention. Many visitors reached out and interacted with the dexterous hands in live rock-paper-scissors contests to see who would win. Under the training of AI trainers, these dexterous hands can adapt to diverse scenarios such as industrial manufacturing, special operations, and service consumption, realizing "360 hands, 360 skills."

"The cloisonné craft incorporates traditional painting, inlay, carving and other techniques, and is refined through six major processes—body making, wire inlay, color filling, enamel firing, polishing, and gilding—and more than one hundred minor processes." In the smart guide section, the "process bottle" on the display stand condenses the six core processes of cloisonné, a unique intangible cultural heritage treasure of Beijing. Next to it, the exhibition area's "star docent," the Tiangong 3.0 humanoid robot, explained to the visitors. This humanoid robot has 43 independently controllable joints and, relying on the precise coordination of its "brain" and "cerebellum," can not only complete high-difficulty movements such as running, jumping, and flipping, but also handle fine intelligent guiding.

The Tiangong 3.0 humanoid robot explains to visitors Beijing's intangible cultural heritage treasure—cloisonné. Photo by Beijing News reporter Xu Yanlin

In the smart manufacturing section, the nanoscale lithography machine represents Beijing's scientific and technological innovation precision benchmarked against the top level. As a national science and technology innovation center, Beijing has long been deeply engaged in key core fields such as integrated circuits and high-end manufacturing. "This wafer transfer lithography training platform before us is real teaching equipment used by our technical colleges. It can fully simulate the entire process of wafer loading, position calibration, process transfer, and lithography processing in a wafer fab, cultivating a group of senior skilled talents in the integrated circuit field," introduced a staff member at the exhibition area.

Scientific and technological innovation achievements must ultimately benefit the people and serve daily life. In the smart living section, the robot of the Galaxy Space Capsule handed cups of freshly made coffee to visitors. Behind the seemingly simple beverage preparation are precise algorithm control, autonomous target recognition, and precise mechanical calibration.

"Skills in the new era are no longer just traditional handicrafts; more are intelligent, high-end new vocational skills," said a staff member at the exhibition area. Beijing adheres to cultivating talent through skills and promoting innovation through talent, continuously cultivating new types of highly skilled talent and helping more young craftsmen step onto new career tracks.

According to reports, in recent years, Beijing has actively explored mechanisms for cultivating skilled talent and innovatively launched a series of measures such as the "Skills Beijing" training action, the "industry-education-evaluation" skills ecosystem chain, the college student certification action, and citizen skills classes. The city's skilled talent has reached 3.68 million, including 1.29 million highly skilled talents, accounting for more than 35%, playing an important supporting role in skilled talent for the high-quality development of the capital.

Editor Miao Chenxia

Proofreader Chen Diyan

Beijing News tip-off email: 82708677@bjnews.com.cn