This year's 15th edition of the Robocompetition has again occupied the Zenger Auditorium of the FEL CTU in Prague's Charles Square for many days with a popular robotics showcase - in the spring stage for primary schools and in the autumn part for secondary school students, which culminates this Friday with the all-day finale. "The interest of student teams in participating was again enormous, so we are at the very limit of the competition's capacity and had to organize four preliminary rounds. Of the 168 robots and their teams, 147 eventually made it to the preliminary rounds and we will see the top 36 this Friday. In addition, the high school students will compete with several robots prepared by their slightly older colleagues from our Cybernetics and Robotics programme," says the main organiser of the Robocompetition, Martin Hlinovský from the Department of Control Engineering at FEL CTU.
The Tower and the "Creative Monsters" Challenge - Design has a special prize in the competition
Traditionally, the Robocompetition always takes place on two identical playgrounds located side by side, where two robotic vehicles try to complete a task in the best possible way and collect points in the allotted time. The winner will eventually emerge from the elimination spider. This year's challenge is called Tower and the goal of the student teams was to build and program the robot to independently, without any other help, pick up as many coloured cubes as possible from the playground, place them inside a yellow rectangle and simultaneously build the tallest tower from the cubes. "We've never really had so many different incredible designs in a competition - and I'm really impressed with the creative solutions the students came up with for the Tower challenge," says Martin Hlinovský. That's why it will also be very interesting to see the announcement of the Robot Design Award this year, which will be presented to the robot with the most imaginative design from partners MathWorks and HUMUSOFT. The twelve robots nominated for this award and their rides in the preliminary rounds can already be viewed on the Robocompetition YouTube channel here.
Come to Karlák on Friday - or watch online
The final of the Robot Competition 2023 is open to media representatives and the public and will take place on Friday, 15 December at 11 a.m. in the Zenger Auditorium of the FEL CTU building in Prague, Karlova náměstí 13. The top-placed high school team will receive, among other prizes for their school, a kit of the Original Prusa MINI+ 3D printer from one of the sponsors of the competition, Applifting.
The exact schedule of the FEL CTU Robo Competition for high schools, competing teams, task description and other details can be found on the website or Facebook. The finals can also be watched live online on the Robocompetition's YouTube channel here.
