Why We Insist on Testing Robot Chassis in Real-World Environments

Customers don't want products that are “theoretically usable”—they demand solutions that “work every single day.” While most smart robot chassis companies are busy building virtual test environments in Gazebo, Isaac Sim, or Webots, Xspirebot's engineers spend their days navigating campuses, factories, slopes, rain-soaked zones, and gravel roads with over a dozen chassis—conducting rigorous real-world field tests.

For instance, the friction coefficient of actual surfaces can undergo abrupt changes during rainy weather, on oily surfaces, or at junctions of different materials. Metal shelving, glass curtain walls, or mirrored elevator doors can cause multiple reflections that interfere with LiDAR and visual sensors. The temperature rise and performance degradation of hub motors during continuous uphill climbing or frequent start-stop operations are also difficult to predict accurately through static simulation. These factors can easily cause smart robot chassis to perform stably in simulations but experience positioning drift, path oscillation, obstacle-crossing failures, or even hardware damage during actual deployment.

To address these challenges, Xspirebot has developed a comprehensive real-world vehicle testing system covering multi-dimensional environments. The test facility encompasses six major categories of typical scenarios:

Indoor High-dynamic Environments (e.g., hospital corridors, dense warehouse shelving areas)

Featuring automatic doors with frequent start-stop cycles, temporary obstacles (e.g., randomly stacked warehouse materials or pallets), unstructured pedestrian traffic (including wheelchairs), reflective/slippery floor surfaces, and multi-device concurrent communication environments under dense Wi-Fi signal coverage.

Outdoor Complex Terrain (gravel roads, grassy areas)

Includes uneven pitted surfaces, slippery muddy ground, leaf-covered areas, metal grating passages, drainage ditch crossings, and surface condensation or light icing caused by day-night temperature fluctuations.

Extreme Climate Conditions (-10°C low-temperature chamber, IPX5 spray zone)

Extended support for wide-temperature cycling tests (-20°C to +50°C), high-humidity (≥90% RH) condensation environments, salt spray corrosion simulation (for coastal or deicing salt regions), and heavy rain simulation (IPX6 short-duration impact spray) to validate the reliability of electronic components, battery performance, and sealing structures.

Electromagnetic Interference Environments (areas near large motors or wireless base stations)

Includes scenarios such as: - Transient interference from inverter start/stop operations, Coexistence of industrial WiFi/Bluetooth/Zigbee multi-band signals, Near-field strong signals from 5G base stations, RF leakage from medical equipment, to test equipment immunity and communication link stability within the 20–6000 MHz frequency band.

Human-Machine Integration Scenarios (Simulating Pedestrian Flow and Sudden Interceptions)

Introducing virtual pedestrians driven by dynamic social force models (including children, elderly individuals, and runners), unexpected obstructions (such as suddenly opened car doors or dropped objects), voice/gesture interaction interference, and multi-robot cooperative avoidance scenarios to evaluate the real-time performance and safety of the perception-decision-control closed loop.

Long-Term Durability Test Track

Combining accelerated aging strategies, the track conducts 24/7 continuous operation on a composite route featuring standard circular lanes, bumpy sections, sharp turns, and frequent start-stop zones. Key metrics such as motor temperature rise, wheel set wear, battery cycle degradation, and software memory leaks are monitored simultaneously to ensure product reliability throughout its entire lifecycle.

All smart chassis platforms must complete at least 500 hours of continuous real-vehicle operation testing before mass production. This testing must cover the entire lifecycle of operations, including startup, cruising, obstacle avoidance, charging, and emergency stops, while recording key metrics such as motor current, battery temperature rise, positioning error, and communication latency.

Additionally, Xspirebot has established a “customer site blind testing” mechanism: without prior knowledge of specific deployment environment details, the smart chassis is transported directly to the customer site for continuous 24/7 operation testing. This approach effectively uncovers edge cases difficult to replicate in laboratories, such as wheel jamming at tile joints, sensor obstruction by temporary obstructions, and ground reflections interfering with SLAM mapping. All issues identified during field testing are cataloged into a “Real-World Anomaly Sample Repository.” These samples are then fed back into the simulation system to enrich training data, optimize perception models and control strategies, ultimately forming an engineering methodology: “Real-vehicle issue discovery → Simulation replication and iteration → Real-vehicle validation loop.”

Our company believes that simulation should complement physical vehicles rather than replace them. Only mobile platforms rigorously tested in real-world environments can truly support the stable, reliable, and long-term operation of service smart robot chassis across diverse industries.