SOUTHFIELD —Teams from Florida in the United States and Canada, China, Ethiopia, Ghana, Hong Kong, Mexico, Macau, Taiwan and more internationally, earned first-place awards at Lawrence Technological University’s 2026 Robofest World Championships, held May 14-16 on LTU’s Southfield campus.
Members of high school teams competed for scholarships from Lawrence Tech worth up to $80,000 over four years, should they decide to make LTU their college choice.
More than 700 students on more than 230 teams from more than 20 countries, and their parents and coaches, attended the three days of events.
Robofest is a series of robotics competitions for students from 4th through 12th grades. Robofest differs from other robotics competitions in that all robots competing are completely autonomous, controlled only by software developed by team members—just like robots in real-world industrial settings. Also, barriers to entry are low—the registration fee is only $100, and any robot kit and programming language can be used. A basic robot kit costs approximately $400.
The most popular Robofest competition is the Game event, in which robots are designed and programmed to accomplish a specific task that changes each year of competition, with some mission requirements revealed to competitors just prior to the event.
The 2025 Game competition is called Building Bridges. In it, robots move pieces of wood to build a “bridge” over an imaginary river on a six-foot game table. The robot’s starting location and orientation and the starting and desired location of the bridge “beams” aren’t revealed until just before the competition. The robot must then roll a “test load” over the completed bridge. (A video of the task is at this link.)
Winning the senior (grades 9-12) Game competition was team LightUp-KnightA from China. Second place went to Team Aurora from Ghana and third to Team Game Changer from Hong Kong.
Winning the junior (grades 5-8) Game division was Team Apex from Ghana. Second place went to Team MSCPSGAME from Hong Kong. Team Error 404 from Bloomfield Hills, Mich. took third place.
Other Robofest divisions include Exhibition, in which teams are free to develop any task and then build a robot to accomplish it; RoboArts, in which robots are created and programmed to perform in areas such as music and visual arts; RoboMed, in which teams create robots that perform tasks in healthcare and the life sciences; the Unknown Mission Challenge, in which mission tasks are totally unknown to teams until the day of competition; RoboParade, a parade of autonomous robot “floats;” BottleSumo, in which robots re programmed to be the first to push a bottle or the other robot off a competition table; and the Vision Centric Challenge, an advanced machine vision competition for senior high school students.
Winning the senior Exhibition category was Team Connector from New Taipei City, Taiwan. Second place went to Team BEEMIND from Pachuca, Mexico. Third place went to Team MAKO Is All You Need from Seoul, Korea. The junior Exhibition category was won by Team RavensPi from Tampa, Fla., with Team Space Alpha from Canton Township, Mich. taking second and Team Measles Doctors, from Ocala, Fla. placing third.
Winning the senior RoboArts category was Team MIDORIS from Mexico, with Team PCMSCOART from Macau winning second and the Pixel Puppeteers from Macau taking third.
The winning senior senior RoboMed team was Team KCISXG from Taiwan, with Team PSMCSOMED from Macau in second and Team BioReact from Oman third. The junior Robomed title went to Team NeuroWheels from Windsor, Canada, with Team Sleepo 2.0 from Windsor, Canada in second.
The Vision Centric Challenge winner was Team Arabots ChevyPop from Mexico, with Team 20/20 Vision from Michigan’s Manoogian School in second and Team Lux Lab from South Korea third.
Winning the RoboParade was team STMPS01 from Hong Kong. The junior Unknown Mission Challenge first prize went to team LightUp-KnightA from China, while the senior  UMC was won by LightUp-sowhat from China.
Bottle Sumo championships were claimed by Team MSCPS from Hong Kong, Team China6 from China, and Team 5076-1 from Hong Kong in the junior division, and by Team China8 from China and Team Legedary White Card from Hong Kong in the senior division.
“Robofest teaches so many students every year important lessons about the jobs of our increasingly robot-driven and automated future, making STEAM education fun,” said Christopher Cartwright, Robofest director and associate professor of mathematics and computer science at LTU.
Robofest was invented at LTU in 1999 by computer science professor C.J. Chung. Since inception, nearly 40,000 students have participated in the program. For more information about Robofest, including a complete list of 2026 placers, visit www.robofest.net.
Next year’s Robofest, in May 2027, will be held in Seoul, South Korea.
Lawrence Technological University is one of only 13 independent, technological, comprehensive doctoral universities in the United States.
