Robots Forge Shop Student Design Bureau of South Ural State University has become the winner in the competitive selection among student design bureaus of educational organizations of higher education. The contest was held by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation as part of the “Universities for the Generation of Leaders” federal project under the “Youth and Children” national project. The total of 174 applications were submitted for the selection.
The student design bureau projects were defended at Plekhanov Russian University of Economics in Moscow. The SUSU team presenting its project included: the Head of the Robots Forge Shop Student Design Bureau, Associate Professor at the Department of Electric Drive, Mechatronics and Electromechanics Ivan Kholodilin; engineer of the Industrial Robots Integration Office of the SUSU Industrial Robotics Development Centre Dariia Sycheva; and engineer of the same Office Alikhan Begenov. The awarding ceremony was held at the “Motherland Means People. Professionals of the Future” event on September 15, 2026.
The contest prizes were awarded by Deputy Chair of the Government of the Russian Federation Dmitrii Chernyshenko, Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation and Chairman of the Competitive Selection Committee Dmitrii Afanasiev, and Chairman of VOIR: All-Russian Society of Inventors and Innovators and Deputy Chair of the State Duma Committee on Science and Higher Education Vladimir Kononov.
The selection consisted of two rounds. First, the Contest Committee checked the compliance of applications with the requirements, and then evaluated those against several criteria. These included: the qualification of the students and staff members, along with the experience of the design bureau’s head in student projects creation and the teams’ participation in R&D funded from budgetary and non-budgetary sources. Separately, they assessed the level of each application’s elaboration and the prospects of projects’ implementation without grants support, as well as the involvement of industrial partners: holding of educational intensive courses for company employees, solving of real production tasks by students, and participation of the partners in the student design bureau’s events. Extra points were awarded to projects in priority fields, such as “Robotics for Industry and Logistics”, “Artificial Intelligence”, “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles”, and more.
The Robots Forge Shop Student Design Bureau is being created at the Faculty of Mechatronics and Robotics. However, students of any SUSU faculty, school or institute, and even those of other universities in the Chelyabinsk Region, can become members of its team. The design bureau’s main field of work is the robotics for industry and logistics. And its goal is to create and improve the mechanism of students’ transition to real R&D and implementation of developments at productions. The team’s core are students, and the fields that the subdivisions specialize in range from robotics, computer vision and drives to mechatronics and computer-aided process control systems.
Activities of the student design bureau are based on the well-developed infrastructure of the SUSU Industrial Robotics Development Centre, full cycle of development, commercial R&D, staff training and teams forming. The funding is arranged through commercial R&D of enterprises and grants assets. The expected result of work in 2026 is the expanding of the team to 15 and more students, and the launch of three projects and two implementations at productions.
The bureau’s R&D program for 2026 includes the development of a water-cooled gripper system for forging robots, engineering of an automated lubrication system for the robotic complex of a horizontal forging machine, and designing of a fast gripping device change system. The design bureau’s plans for 2027 include: six projects, two applications on the results of intellectual activity, three test prototypes, two implementation acts, no less than five paid R&D, and no less than two external customers with non-budgetary funds amounting to 500,000 roubles and more.
“Winning in the contest of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science, first and foremost, for us is a confirmation of the fact that the chosen student design bureau model is in demand and is of practical value,” comments Associate Professor at the SUSU Department of Electric Drive, Mechatronics and Electromechanics Ivan Kholodilin. “The Robots Forge Shop bureau is being created not as a hobby club, but as an engineering platform, where students will be able to work on real tasks of enterprises in the field of robotics for industry and logistics: from setting of a technical assignment and designing to prototype creation, testing and implementation. To start with, this victory helps us form a stable student team, launch the first R&D works, equip the work places, and achieve a deeper integration of the bureau into the SUSU infrastructure. It is important to us that students get engaged in real engineering projects as early as possible, could work together with the teaching staff, engineers and enterprise representatives, and could already gain the experience most close to industrial development while still studying. In the future, we would like the Robots Forge Shop bureau to become an established mechanism of training engineers and of creating Russian robotic solutions for enterprises in our region and across our country.”
Creation of this student design bureau is part of the tasks of the “Intelligent Manufacturing. Robotics” strategic project under the Priority-2030 program. The bureau interacts with the SUSU faculties and institutes, other universities in our region, Industrial Robotics Development Centre, industrial partners, and sector-related ministries. Its partners include: Chelyabinsk Forging and Pressing Plant, Robot Plant, Chelyabinsk Compressor Plant, LD Group of Companies, Production and engineering company “Privodnaya Technika” (“Drive Technology”), Chelyabinsk Flange Plant, Snezhinsk Plant of Special-purpose Electrical Machines, and Energochel company. By 2027, the bureau plans on expanding the team to 25 students and increasing the number of industrial partners to twenty.