A Storm of Sparks
Robochallenge 2024 was a storm of sparks, shattered armor, and motors pushed to their limits. With more than seventy robots flooding the competition brackets it was one of the most intense events of the season. We arrived with two machines that could not have been more different in size but carried the same Shobolinsky DNA: EVO II and MINI. One was built to take hits like a wall, the other to dart like a rat, but together they showed just how far our design philosophy had come.
Shobolinsky EVO II
EVO II was the heavyweight of the pair, the direct successor to our earlier EVO but meaner, tougher, and more ambitious. It was designed to fight like a tank, to stay in the arena no matter what was thrown at it. The event tested that promise immediately. EVO II was hit, slammed, tossed into the air, flipped, and thrown across the floor. Every time the crowd held its breath, waiting for the chassis to shatter or the electronics to fail, but EVO II just kept coming back.
Its resilience was not just engineering foresight but improvisation in its rawest form. Minutes before the matches, Atena slapped together a top shield from spare parts and duct tape—a Frankenstein patch that looked ridiculous but ended up saving the robot. That shield absorbed blows that would have torn into the internals, holding everything together when it mattered. By the end of the event EVO II stood among the top eight robots in a field of seventy plus, not because it was flawless but because it simply refused to die.
“EVO II did not win because it was flawless. It won respect because it refused to die.”
Shobolinsky MINI
MINI was a very different animal. Entered into the mini-sumo championship, it carried the same aggressive wedge profile and low-slung stance as its bigger siblings, but scaled down and stripped of excess. MINI was almost a third lighter than the category limit, underbuilt compared to its rivals, but it carried the Shobolinsky signature all the same. It even had a spoiler—partly for fun, partly as a nod to our obsession with unnecessary but delightful details.
That spoiler ended up saving the robot. In one of its most chaotic matches MINI was flipped, and instead of crushing its own electronics the spoiler took the blow and kept the system alive. The crowd loved it. A tiny robot, lighter and weaker than its opponents, running around with a spoiler like a sports car and somehow fighting its way into the semifinals. It proved that even our smallest designs carried the same spirit: resilience, ingenuity, and a refusal to go quietly.
“A spoiler built for fun ended up saving MINI’s life.”
The Philosophy Scales
Robochallenge 2024 gave us one of our most memorable outings to date. EVO II was the bruiser, ranking in the top eight after tanking hits that would have broken most robots in half. MINI was the scrappy underdog, lighter and smaller but clever enough to survive flips and keep fighting all the way into the semifinals. Together they showed that Shobolinsky is not just one kind of robot but a design philosophy that scales up and down. Big or small, heavy or light, duct tape or SLM prints, the rats fight the same way—with stubbornness, creativity, and just enough chaos to keep everyone watching.