Duminică Dănuț-Alexandru
Team lead
DUO TEAM · VEX U
Eight students, two robots, one season
DUO is the robotics team of the STEM DUO Association. We compete in VEX U — the university division of the international VEX Robotics competition — where we design, build and program robots for each season’s challenge.
Team members
8 students. Complementary disciplines. One goal. The team brings together students from the University of Bucharest, the National University of Science and Technology POLITEHNICA Bucharest and Eindhoven University of Technology.
Duminică Adrian-Cătălin
Technical lead · CAD/Design · Assembly
Costache Ștefan
Member · CAD/Design · Assembly
Frumuzache Alexandru Marian
Member · Programming
Gheorghiaș Daria Ioana
Member · CAD/Design · Assembly
Bălan Ștefan Eduard
Member · Programming · Assembly
Teodor Lepadatu
Mentor · Programming
David Mihai
Mentor · CAD/Design
The team photo
Awards and results
Expertise and performance: the results achieved by team members in the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC), before moving up to VEX U.
| Year | Distinction | Competition | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Design Award — 3rd place | FTC Romania National Championship | Romania |
| 2025 | Qualification | Maryland Tech Invitational | Maryland, USA |
| 2024 | Think Award — 2nd place | FTC World Championship | Houston, USA |
| 2024 | Semi-finalists, Edison Division | FTC World Championship | Houston, USA |
| 2024 | National runners-up | FTC Romania National Championship | Romania |
| 2024 | Inspire Award — 2nd place | FTC Romania National Championship | Romania |
On top of these: many finals played and won, and numerous regional and national awards between 2023 and 2025.
What we aim for in VEX U
Excellence Award
The most important distinction at a VEX tournament, rewarding the complete team: robot, documentation and organisation.
Design Award
An award for the design process, documented in the engineering notebook.
Qualifying for the World Championship
The team’s long-term goal: a place at the VEX World Championship.
The team’s robots
The robots with which we made our mark at international competitions — experience proven through prototyping, integration and competition. Every season brings a new game, and so new robots.
The VEX U robots
Robot photo
Coming soon
The team’s first VEX U robots — two of them, as the rules require — built for the Override game. We will publish photos and the technical sheet once they have passed workshop testing.
- Competition VEX U
- Game Override
VOID
A robot built and programmed by team members for the 2025 FIRST Tech Challenge competitions.
- Competition FIRST Tech Challenge
MK5
A robot built and programmed by team members for the 2024 FIRST Tech Challenge competitions.
- Competition FIRST Tech Challenge
MK3
A robot built and programmed by team members for the 2023 FIRST Tech Challenge competitions.
- Competition FIRST Tech Challenge
The DUO team’s mission
To train the next generation of innovative engineers in Romania through competitive robotics and STEM education — and to represent Romania at VEX U, the largest university robotics championship in the world.
Our goals
- To build a better robot every season than the one before.
- To document every technical decision rigorously in the engineering notebook.
- To represent Romania in international robotics competitions, with the 2027 VEX World Championship as the ultimate goal.
- To promote science and technology among young people — we have already brought robotics to more than 20,000 participants.
- To take our competition experience back into the community, through workshops.
- To help new teams get started, through technical mentoring.
What holds us together
- Technical rigour. Decisions are made on data and testing, not on intuition.
- Teamwork. A robot is a sum of subsystems; nobody finishes it alone.
- Fair play. Respect for opponents, referees and organisers.
- Transparency. We share what we learned, failures included.
Why “DUO”
The name comes from the two twin brothers who founded the association and the team. It stayed even after the team grew to 8 members — as a reminder of how it all started.
What VEX U is
The university robotics league in which teams design, build and program two robots for a new game every season. VEX U is the university division of the international VEX Robotics competition, run by the REC Foundation.
400+
Teams worldwide
2007
First year of the competition
Global
Competition network
- Design
- Manufacturing
- Programming
- Competition
A new game every season
At the start of each season a new challenge is announced, with its own field, game elements and scoring rules. Every team in the world designs robots for the same challenge.
Autonomous and driver control
Matches combine an autonomous period, where the robot runs the code the team wrote on its own, with a driver-controlled period run by the team’s drivers.
The robot is not the only thing scored
Judges also assess the engineering notebook and the team interview. That is why documenting the process matters as much as performance in the arena.
This season’s game: Override
Override is played on a 3.66 × 3.66 m (12 × 12 ft) field. Each match pits two teams against each other, each with two robots of its own. The match starts with a 30-second autonomous period, in which the robots run solely on the programs written by the team, and continues with 90 seconds of driver control. The field holds 63 Pins, 56 Cups, 9 Goals (four short neutral ones, one tall neutral one and two for each team), 4 Toggles placed in the middle of each wall and a central zone called the Midfield.
- Objective: to outscore the opponent by stacking Pins and Cups on Goals, by controlling the Toggles and by positioning the robots in the Midfield at the end of the match.
- Each Pin in the team’s colour scored on a Goal is worth 5 points. A yellow Pin is worth 10 points to the team controlling the Toggle in that quadrant.
- Each robot in the Midfield at the end earns 8 points. The team with more points in the autonomous period receives a 12-point bonus.
The VEX World Championship
An environment of excellence where we could represent Romanian engineering at the highest competitive level.
Las Vegas, Nevada, USA · 23–30 April 2027
Support our journeyThe official source
The full rules, the game elements and the official calendar are published by the competition organisers.
LET’S WORK TOGETHER
Support the DUO team
A competition season means parts, materials, travel and entry fees. Any kind of support — from components to technical mentoring — counts.
- Sponsorship
- Workshops
- Demonstrations
- Mentoring
We reply to every message within three working days at the latest.