WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BUILD SOMETHING FOR MONTHS AND WATCH IT FAIL IN SECONDS

A lot of people only see the final ranking, the medals, or a clean robot run. They do not see how quickly months of work can go wrong.

At the WRO European Open 2025 in Slovenia, things started well. In the Open Round Challenge, we achieved full points in 24 seconds—the fastest time there. Before the competition and during practice, the robot behaved almost exactly as we wanted.

We noticed strange speed drops and suspected a bad cable connection. We resoldered everything; the problem disappeared, and we assumed it was fixed.

There was not enough time to replace it. We entered without a working robot and received zero points. That afternoon we replaced the motor driver and the surrounding resistors and capacitors. By the next day, the robot worked again.

During practice it was nearly achieving full points, with only a small parking inconsistency. In the official run it drifted, touched the parking wall, and the entire parking section did not count.

We still finished second overall and scored 28 points for documentation. The event contained the fastest run, a burned motor driver, emergency repairs, and an almost-perfect comeback.

The lesson

A robot does not need to work once. It needs to work every time. Speed matters, but reliability matters more.