The ROBUL team, the first team in the Ústí Region and the second in the Czech Republic, which is participating in the prestigious FIRST international competition in robotics at the end of March, is intensively preparing for the competition. When the organizers of the FIRST Robotics Competition released the pitch parameters and specifications for the robot's construction on January 6, all team members immediately put their heads together and began to think about how to handle the construction.

At the beginning of January, the team only had a sample of the chassis from last year's competition, which was sent to them by one of the team members, Václav Hudský, who participated in the competition as an American high school student. Today, less than 7 weeks after the publication of the assignment, the team has a finished robot, capable of standing up in almost all disciplines. He still manages to overcome the last obstacle and completes the programming.

The team is made up of pupils from Ústí secondary schools, mentors from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and the Faculty of Science of the Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem (UJEP) and parents. The Innovation Center of the Ústí Region (ICUK) covers the entire project, co-finances it and is looking for partners, strong players from the Ústí Region who want to support this ambitious team. Thanks to ICUK, the ROBUL team currently has nine partners: Sev.en Other as a Platinum partner, Mr Martin Vohánka, MBA as a Gold partner, and companies Centropol Energy, Municipal cultural facilities in Litoměřice, NYYLO, agency Dream Pro and ORLEN Unipetrol Foundation as Silver partners, they have a big stake in our success. Other partners include the director of ICUK personally Ing. Martin Mata, MBA, LL.M. and society Malfini as. The patronage of the project was taken over by the Ministry for Regional Development and the Councilor of the Ústí Region for Education, Youth and Sports Ing. Jindra Zalabáková.

"In the beginning, there was a huge challenge, actually three challenges: to start a competition that no one at ICUK knew about, to create a team that would be motivated by their own conviction to create a robot from scratch and fly it to an international competition, and thirdly to find almost three a quarter of a million crowns for the entire project to take place. Today, after less than two months, I can proudly say that I have a team and a robot in front of me who are able to represent themselves and our region in the prestigious competition in Chicago. And in addition, a large part of the necessary costs. It's incredible what we've accomplished in such a short time." says Martin Mata, director of ICUK. 

Now it is important that the robot and the team are safely transported to the competition. Then it's just up to the team, pupils and mentors, how they deal with the three-day competition itself. "Thanks go not only to all the partners and parents of students from the team, but also to the DigiLab in the premises of UJEP, without which ROBUL would not be where it is today.", adds director Mata.

There is a month left until the team's departure, but the robot will be packed and ready for transport as early as March 7. All that remains is to keep our fingers crossed for the entire ROBUL and ICUK team to perform as well as possible in the competition. This year is a pilot for the next years, which ICUK and UJEP want to continue, thus supporting the development of young talents in the field of technology and robotics.

The possibility of becoming a partner of the RobUL project is still open, just contact ICUK representative Tamara Klein by email klein.t@icuk.cz.
You can find more information about the project on the subpage icuk.cz/sluzby/edu.