SoBotz is a one-person workshop in Šiauliai, Lithuania, making the robot parts I wished existed when I started competing.
Tomas Sobutas — owner, maker and everything in between
I am from Šiauliai, Lithuania’s fourth-largest city, and I study electronics engineering at Kaunas University of Technology. Electronics caught me as a kid, LEGO robotics followed around 2013, and I built my first mini sumo robot in 2016.
Since then I have competed across Europe. The losses between 2017 and 2019 came from trying to innovate instead of copying the designs that already worked — these days I usually place. I wrote up my mini sumo robot in detail on blog.jsumo.com, and it is good to see other builders using those ideas.
SoBotz exists because the EU market was slacking: the parts that actually perform were either hard to get or priced far too high. So I make and stock them here.
Events I run
Recycled Antweight Workshop — a low-cost robot build at Kaunas Makerspace using recycled filament and LiPo batteries: roughly €16 per robot, released as open source.
MakerWars 2023 — the makerspace’s first antweight competition, with more than 40 attendees.
ComicClash 2024 — an antweight competition during Comic Con Baltics 2024, with 40 robots and special awards.