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Northeastern University team wins MassRobotics challenge

May 27, 2025
Fifteen teams competing in the 3rd Form & Function University Robotics Challenge,

MassRobotics announced the winners of its 3rd Form & Function University Robotics Challenge. The Transformative Robotics Lab Northeastern University team with their Soft Robotic Arm Screwdriver that spun and safely scrubbed plates won this year's first place prize.

Fifteen teams from around the globe showcased their robotics and automation projects, competing for cash prizes. The idea of this challenge is to create a robot that looks good (form) and works (function).

Components and software were donated to the teams by our sponsors: Altium, AMD, Analog Devices, Autodesk, Copley Controls, Danfoss, Festo, Harmonic Drive, Igus, Lattice Semiconductor, Maxon, Mitsubishi Electric, Novanta, helping the student teams utilize the latest offerings in the industry.

Second prize and Audience Choice were both awarded to the same team, University of Waterloo Gripper for First Responders. This team had a unique gripper and arm that could assess victims in an emergency.

Third prize was awarded to the returning Heat Robotics University of British Columbia Okanagan Campus Wildfire Containment team with their continued development and enhancements to their approach to fighting and preventing wildfires.

A panel of judges from the robotics industry awarded an honorable mention to the Kurtz Robotics Boston University Automated Grow Bed team for its robot that can pick tomatoes in a scalable cost effective way.

MassRobotics also hosted a Startup Alley that showcased 21 of our resident startups including Algorized, Ascend Robotics, ATDev, Aura Intelligent Systems, Ava Robotics, Black-I Robotics, Cerulion, Cobionix Corporation, Entriya, Hathaway Robotics, LabyrinthAI, ModalAI, Paper Table, Ras Labs, Resix, Rowbot Systems, Soterya, Thinking Robots, TP7, Ubiros, and Vision Cycle.

MassRobotics Accelerator, powered by Mass Tech Collaborative showcased the companies in the Accelerator cohort; each company presented its technologies and business models, highlighting the impact of the Accelerator program at the Robotics Summit: participating companies are Haystack Ag, LiftLabs, Mito Robotics, Nexterity, p!ng, Redefine Surgery, ReviMo, Revolute Robotics, Tatum Robotics, and Variable Machines.

Healthcare Robotics Startup Catalyst program highlighted its latest cohort of startups who made their final presentations, sharing their milestones and achievements made during this year's program. Startups included: OTSAW, ReviMo, Sixdof Space, Subtlebotic, TechNovator, Tenomix.

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