At FIRST Tech Challenge Italy Championship, school students from all over the world build, program, and test robots to compete with other teams. Throughout the championship, teams are supported by experienced mentors.

This year, the team Sputnik Original from Lyceum No. 244 in St. Petersburg – students of grades 8-10 – earned the top score and was crowned the event’s absolute winner for the second year in a row. The team designed a robot that can locate and sort historical artifacts on a playing field by completing a series of engineering and strategic tasks – both via software and controlled by an operator. It’s composed of several purpose-specific mechanics: a system for rapid artifact collection, a distribution module that moves objects between different parts of the robot, a firing mechanism launching objects at a set angle, and a targeting system for precise aim.

The team performed under the guidance of a group of mentors, among whom were ITMO students Anastasia Mikheeva, Ksenia Slonimskaya, Ilya Kutsyi, and Mikhail Sladkov. For a year, they trained and helped organize the work of the entire team: namely, Anastasia managed the team’s media department and helped prepare presentations and visuals, Ksenia led the programming team and handled code reviews, Mikhail worked on computer vision tasks and assisted with robot automation, and Ilya supervised the team and helped with engineering documentation.

“The key to our success was the systematic work the team did throughout the season. They haven’t just built a robot – they perfected its design multiple times. What they got as a result are five full-fledged versions of the robot and over 20 part variants. Sputnik Original received the highest recognition for their strong engineering solution, close-knit teamwork, and contribution to the robotics community,” says Ilya Kutsyi, one of the team’s mentors and a student at ITMO’s Higher School of Engineering and Technology. 

Thanks to their victory, the team will now proceed to the next stage of the tournament – one of the world’s largest robotics championships that will take place in Houston, USA, in April and will bring together the best engineering teams among school students. Last year, Sputnik Original became the first Russian team to win the championship, finishing third in the category Connect Award.

FIRST Tech Challenge Italy Championship is an international robotics championship where school students from around the world build robots and solve various tasks. In 2026, the championship brought together teams from Russia, Romania, Colombia, Venezuela, Italy, Greece, Slovenia, Zimbabwe, Spain, San Marino, Serbia, China, and Switzerland.