The second group of guys in Tartu are the “gurus”. They have already done at least one Robotex, and their current aim is not so much to make a baseline working device, but rather to create something fun and unusual. This takes them way more than a couple of months.

First is team Nasty, who are making an extra-cute tiny robot with a hyperbolic mirror (this way one camera can see the whole field). Their robot design was even published in a SolidWorks-themed magazine (lost the link to it, sorry).

If team Nasty is aiming for a smallest possible size, another team (not sure about the name), is making a hyperbolic-mirror based robot which is as large as it can get. Its weight is going to be close to the upper allowed limit of 8kg. Unfortunately, I did not manage to get a shot of this robot in its assembled shape, but here’s the view of its lower base plate during maintenance:

The third guru here is Matis, who is working on something which has huge wheels, two kilowatt-or-so powerful motors and can drive around at 5-10 m/s, if not more. This robot is in its early stages yet, so it does not have anything besides the motors and wheels yet. As usual, I could not even get a good shot of it

Finally, there is a robot that, I am sure, is going to be everyone’s favourite, once it steps up onto the Robotex field (which, unfortunately is not happening this year yet). This is the legged spider by team “polügoon Z”.

The best part of it is that the Spider robot team maintains an awesome blog, covering everything about their robot’s insides and outsides.