Chewy, MassRobotics announce winners of 2025 CHAMP Challenge

The CHAMP (Chewy Autonomous Mobile Picking) Challenge, developed by Chewy in collaboration with MassRobotics, was created to address a persistent and technically complex limitation in warehouse automation: enabling fully autonomous robots to handle large, heavy, and non-rigid items within dense and dynamic fulfillment center environments. 

Now, MassRobotics and Chewy have announced the winner and runner-up of the 2025 CHAMP Challenge.

Black-I Robotics, Inc. won the competition and delivered a full-stack autonomous picking system with AI-driven perception, custom end-effectors and robust warehouse navigation. Black-I Robotics was awarded $30K for winning the competition.

Breezey Machine Company finished as the runner-up and impressed with a practical, low-profile gripper design with modular integration potential. Breezey Machine was awarded $15K as the runner-up.

CHAMP Challenge background 

Per the challenge, items associated with Chewy often weigh over 40 pounds and exhibit variable shapes, surface textures and levels of deformability, which present a multi-layered manipulation challenge. Their irregular geometry and low structural stiffness reduce the effectiveness of conventional suction or parallel-jaw gripping techniques, while inconsistent stacking and presentation on pallets further complicate object recognition and grasp planning.

Beyond the manipulation task, the CHAMP Challenge demanded system-level integration: robotic platforms needed to navigate through aisles as narrow as 20 inches, coordinate with live warehouse operations, and place picked items into shipping containers of varying dimensions, potentially with mixed-product contents.

MassRobotics and Chewy said the challenge called for embodied AI systems capable of perception-driven decision-making, robust grasp adaptation and safe operation in collaborative settings. To support development, the Chewy Robotics team provided contestants with photos and videos of fulfillment operations, access to the Chewy robotics lab, and a comprehensive NVIDIA Omniverse simulation package, including a digital twin of the warehouse and 3D assets for a subset of Chewy’s product line. The challenge aimed to enable teams to validate their systems, whether as simulation-based prototypes or as physical systems ready to interact with the real world.

MassRobotics and Chewy said 12 global teams were selected to participate in the CHAMP Challenge, representing a diverse mix of early-stage startups and independent robotics engineers.

Over several months, these teams engaged in close collaboration with members of the Chewy Robotics team who delivered guidance on operational constraints, fulfillment workflows, and system-level requirements. The resulting prototypes combined hardware innovation with advanced perception, motion planning and manipulation strategies tailored to the challenge’s demands.

Black-I Robotics wins the CHAMP Challenge

Black-I Robotics, a Massachusetts-based MassRobotics resident with a foundation in defense-grade mobile manipulation, earned the $30,000 grand prize for delivering a sophisticated, full-stack autonomous picking system. MassRobotics said their system featured a robust mobile base paired with a 6-DOF industrial arm, leveraging custom multi-modal end effectors engineered to handle large, deformable and heavy SKUs.

The Black-I Robotics team developed a system that won the 2025 CHAMP Challenge from Chewy and MassRobotics. Source: MassRobotics

Black-I’s approach integrated AI-driven perception with high-confidence object detection and pose estimation, enabling precise grasping of non-rigid items stacked on mixed pallets. The robot demonstrated full-facility navigation using fiducial markers and SLAM, dynamic obstacle avoidance for safe operation alongside warehouse associates, and easy integration into downstream workflows via autonomous box placement.

MassRobotics said their consistent iteration, deep technical execution and delivery of a complete mobile manipulation pipeline set their entry apart, meeting the challenge’s core demands for autonomy, adaptability and deployability in constrained warehouse environments.

Breezey Machine takes home second place

Breezey Machine Company, a team of independent engineers from the Boston area, was awarded the $15,000 runner-up prize for their creative and mechanically elegant approach to one of warehouse automation’s most persistent challenges: handling large, heavy and irregularly shaped packages in tight spaces.

Breezey Machine Corporation founder Arturas Malinauskas. Source: MassRobotics

MassRobotics said their system focused on end-of-arm tool innovation, presenting a novel, low-profile gripper capable of adapting to deformable and variably stacked items with minimal pre-alignment. By emphasizing mechanical compliance and passive alignment strategies, Breezey’s design achieved secure grasps without relying heavily on high-precision vision or complex control algorithms.

MassRobotics added that the Breezey Machine team also demonstrated thoughtful consideration of integration, proposing a modular arm-mounted system that could be retrofitted to existing mobile platforms or used within compact cell configurations. Their submission stood out for its practicality, manufacturability and the potential to serve as a robust subsystem within larger automation workflows. 

MassRobotics said Breezey’s ingenuity and attention to real-world constraints exemplified the kind of targeted, systems-level thinking the CHAMP Challenge aimed to foster.