National Robotics Competition 2025; Credit: Ali Sahib, Chronicle.lu

On Saturday 8 February 2025, the Luxembourg Youth Robotics Challenge (LYRC) took place at the Lycée Aline Mayrisch, in Luxembourg-City. 

The tournament, organised and hosted by the non-profit Make It asbl, presented the opportunity for over 125 junior robot builders, aged between ten and eighteen years old, to try out their robots’ capabilities in a series of challenges designed to test the construction, coding and driving skills of the junior developers.

With over 400 people in attendance to cheer on the competitors, each robot was subjected to a series of challenges based on the age group of their developers, with the results being used to select teams to represent Luxembourg in the upcoming VEX Worlds competitions in Dallas, USA, and the FIRST Global Robotics Challenge in Panama.

The junior category (ages ten to fourteen years) were the first to participate in an event titled “Capture The Flag”, which involved having to take an opponent's flag out of their designated area for as long as possible. For this test, existing hardware could be used but any coding was limited to a specific set of protocols using a block-based coding system (Scratch, mBlock, Blocky, etc.) The winners in this category were “Die 4 Chicken Nuggets” (first place) from the primary school in Gilsdorf, “Käercher Geeschter” (second place) from the primary school in Koerich, with third place going to the “Losers” team, also from Gilsdorf.

Next up was the VEX IQ challenge, also targeted at the age group of ten to fourteen years old. This was a collaborative challenge where robots must work in alliance to pass a number of balls between each other and then place them in specified targets. The winner of this round was “DojoBot” from Code Club Luxembourg, securing them a place in October’s competition in Dallas. 

Finally, there was the VEX Robotics Challenge, which involved capturing and stacking various rings in specific places within a defined arena. The two winning teams came from Lycée Vauban, with their robot “VEX BOYZ”, and the team from Lycée Aline Mayrisch (LAML) and their robot “DeLuLu”. The team from Lycée Aline Mayrisch also secured the event’s “Excellence Award”, cementing their opportunity to represent Luxembourg in the upcoming Dallas competition.

The team selected to represent Luxembourg at the FIRST Global Robotics Challenge in Panama was composed by selecting five members from each of the participating teams and will consist of: Carolina and Ishak (team DeLuLu of LAML), Louis (team T-VEX from Lycée Vauban), Sergio (team CyberKnights from Lycée Technique d’Ettelbruck) and Marcos (team Y of the l’International School Luxembourg). Along with their coach, Chris of Lycée Technique d’Ettelbruck, the team will travel to Panama for the competition which runs from Wednesday 29 October through to Sunday 2 November 2025.

Speaking to Chronicle.lu about the competition, Secretary of Make It asbl, Marc Teusch, said: “We developed this [competition] to push the interests of a younger talents to develop their skills further and their interests in science, because we need scientists across the whole world and especially in Luxembourg. We encourage people to bring their children [to these competitions] and also come and visit us themselves.”

SM