On April 22, for the first time in Daugavpils City, robotics competitions “Robotika Daugavpils 2023” took place at Daugavpils Opportunity Secondary School. Over 200 participants from Latgale, Vidzeme, Zemgale, Riga, our neighbor Lithuania’s schools and robotics clubs took part in the competition. In total, the competition featured 14 robotics disciplines in various categories, including for students and professionals. There were exciting Lego sumo, line following, folkrace, Irobot, mini sumo, and sumo team battles.

The goal of the competition is to promote children’s and young people’s interest in engineering and robotics, which is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world. Participation in the competition is not limited to the number of registered robots, the number of team members, or the age of the participant. For many competition participants, it was their first or second competition, but definitely, more will follow!

Competition disciplines:
Line following – the robot’s task is to drive the given track as quickly and accurately as possible, which is a black line on a white field.
Lego Sumo – Lego construction robots compete against each other on the ring, trying to push each other out of it.
iRobot Sumo – vacuum cleaner robots, which have been modified to fight in the ring.
Folkrace – robots compete on the track for the time they are capable of driving, with only the most outstanding robots able to win.
In the freestyle category, everyone has the opportunity to demonstrate their robotics achievements to a wider audience.

The competition was held with the financial support of the cross-border program project LLI-542 “IT Programming and Robotics Competence Development in Cross-border Region Schools in Latgale, Visaginas, and Ignalina” (acronym: RoboNet).