What happens when 14 people with a passion for robotics come together? They create robots and win 32 awards and prizes in top robotics contests. Their name is Flex Team and when we met them we were impressed with their passion and achievements. So we decided to support them in further developing robots. The key to successful collaboration and to building a winning autonomous robot is teamwork. The group of people you gather to make the project happen is the secret sauce. Help them communicate instantly, then add a touch of passion, and you can do anything. We couldn’t agree more, that’s how Hubgets enables teamwork 🙂

The story behind robot sumo tournaments

Robot sumo is a sport invented in Japan, through which the participants gain valuable knowledge of robotics technology. The competitions are based on the principles of traditional Japanese Sumo wrestling. During these games, two homemade robots fight each other in an attempt to remove the other out of the ring. The winner is the robot that stays inside the game surface for at least two rounds out of three.

The robot building process gives them the opportunity to apply what they have studied during university years and to further challenge their creativity. Sumo robots can be autonomous or radio controlled. An autonomous sumo robot is built with sensors and devices which allow it to function without human control, whereas the radio controlled robots are handled by people remotely.

Team Flex and the secret to their successful collaboration

Robotics Team Flex was put together back in 2008 in Romania by a group of enthusiastic engineers, and students getting ready to become engineers, specialized in mechanics, electronic circuitry, and computer science. Their goal was to build an autonomous high-performance robot for the engineering challenges Mini and Mega Sumo. The team currently ranks among the top 5 in international contests for Mini and Mega Sumo. In the past 8 years, after improving their skills and knowledge of hardware and software, Flex developed 8 autonomous robots, Wolf and Shreddinger being the most used in competitions.

Their achievements in Europe and winning RobotChallenge 2016 in Vienna led to receiving an official invitation to participate in the All Japan Robot-Sumo Tournament in Tokyo, the largest robotics contest in the world. The event is not accessible for teams to enroll themselves, as they need to receive an official invitation from the organizers. In 2015, Wolf won 2nd place and Shreddinger 4th in the All Japan Robot-Sumo Tournament.