Romanian team wins 1st place for the second time in a USA International Robotics Championship
The AutoVortex Romanian robotics team won 1st place at the International Robotics Championship in the United States, in Utah.
Maiavankline · Journalist
· Updated · 4 min read
The AutoVortex Romanian robotics team won 1st place at the International Robotics Championship in the United States, in Utah.
The competition is directed at teams of high-schoolers, who build a robot, program it, and then place it in the ring to compete against the others. In the ring, the robots have to complete a set of tasks in a certain amount of time. The team that earns the highest amount of points wins. The aim of the competition is that teenagers learn about robotics and AI while having fun.
The highschool students on the AutoVortex team are: Andrei Ianis Midache, Theodor Adrian Vasile, Radu Gabriel Dăscălescu, Maria Ioana Dicu, Adrian Florin Hănțăscu, Elena Maria Vasile, and Răzvan Iacob Milea.
The team is coached by Valentin Ionuț Panea, a finance teacher from the Bucharest University of Economic Studies (ASE), and mentored by Ana Andreea Lipianu, a student at the Politehnica University of Bucharest.
Romania's AutoVortex Robotics Team have previously won several awards: they took first place at last year’s International Robotics Championship in Chicago, which marked the first time since 1989 that a team from outside the United States won 1st place in the championship, 1st at the International Robotics Championship in Libya, which took place earlier this year, in Tripoli, and again 1st place at the International Robotics Championship in Jamaica.
Coach Valentin Panea spoke to News.ro about the road to victory:
"This is the third robot variant. The first variant we used in Libya at the beginning of the year, where we managed to take 1st place. We had to move very quickly for that competition, and the robot we ended up with was not exactly the model we wanted.
After that we went to Jamaica with the second version of the robot, again we won 1st place, but the robot was quite heavy, it broke down often and there wasn't much pleasure in competing with it.
After that, we built a smaller robot - much more compact, much more agile. We managed to program it from scratch. For the last month and a half, we were working in the Politehnica hub day and night.
Last year we were the first team in the world, we managed to win first place in Chicago, and we didn’t want to fare any worse this year, so we worked hard for this competition.
At first, when we arrived, the American kids didn't think we stood a chance - when you see a small robot, you’re not afraid of it - but we ended up beating all of them."
