Sponsors & Contacts
When the team struggles to solve a technical challenge, the technical manager can step in using his knowledge of sponsors and external contacts who could help. Several types of contacts exist:
- Suppliers/sponsors: The suppliers/sponsors are listed under the Product Tree. This list includes what Roboteam used from each company during the year 2025-2026. (Please check with your external manager which one of these are sponsors).
- Service sponsors: Certain companies, that are willing to sponsor Roboteam, offer a certain monetary contribution and access to certain services:
- Demcon generally makes a contract with each student team individually at the beginning of January that includes a certain number of working hours (50 hours in 2026). These hours can be used for teaching sessions but also for consultancy, for development, and for expansion of Roboteam's technical network. Benchmark is a company with a very large variety of expertise fields, from biomedical to military engineering, and hence can also find adequate experts to help us, depending on the needs of Roboteam.
- VDL is an important contact for Roboteam as our founder (Rick Timmer) currently works there. Usually, VDL organises a little introduction to technical drawing for all student teams at the beginning of the year. Later on, VDL is sometimes willing to produce certain metallic components for Roboteam. However, the team must provide proper technical drawings to VDL. Rick and his colleagues are generally happy to check, correct and advise on the design of certain components and their technical drawings. VDL is a company with many alumni from the UT and Saxion, and has an important expertise in metal manufacturing.
- Benchmark offers multiple services, among which are laser-cutting services and testing infrastructures. They are generally open to discussion and are willing to help us find the most adequate service for the needs of the team.
- Mareco has been used in previous generations of Roboteam for 3D printing of challenging materials. The generation of 2023-2024 contacted them to print the omniwheels (contact Chris).
- Rosenxt is a company located in Enschede that recently worked on the development of a robotic arm and its end manipulator. They have a large range of experts, but our year (2025-2026) mainly exchanged with software experts.
- RAM: Research group at the university specialised in fundamental and application-driven topics in the field of robotics. With expertise in control, embedded systems and electronics, RAM is a great source of help for Roboteam when facing unknown or challenging technical challenges.
- Service infrastructures: Certain infrastructures from the University of Twente and Hogeschool Saxion can also be of great help for Roboteam. Here is a brief list of these infrastructures:
- FAB Lab: FAB Lab is a high-tech workspace related to Hogeschool Saxion, and that provides infrastructures for wood laser-cutting, plastic laser-cutting, polymer printing, textiles and sticker printing. The team must simply go to the workspace and inform the staff that they come from a student team. Roboteam has, each year, a certain budget given by Saxion that they can spend in the FAB Lab.
- CUBE: The CUBE is a building within the University of Twente that is equipped with milling machines, lathes, bending machines, cutting machines, welding infrastructures, laser-cutting and CNC machines. The workshop mainly focuses on metallurgical work and can be used by students who have contacted the CUBE staff (see details on ing. N.T.M. Spikker (Norbert)) to ensure availability of the machines and who have been trained by the CUBE staff to use the machines safely.
- DesignLab: Similar to FAB Lab, DesignLab is a high-tech workspace within the University of Twente. In addition to the space they offer for events, trainings and workshops, DesignLab is equipped with several FDM 3D printers, wood laser-cutting machines and many more.
- Fraunhofer: Fraunhofer is a building of the University of Twente that is used mainly for research on additive manufacturing of polymers and metals. The staff of Fraunhofer is generally open to helping student teams with the manufacturing of complex parts as both advisors and manufacturers (Contact dr.ir. K. Goulas (Constantinos) for more information).
- Advisors:
- dr.ir. S. Arastehfar (Soheil): Soheil is one of the three teachers who organise the PD&D minor at the UT. He teaches Design Methodology within the PD&D minor. He has a very large expertise in control and, more generally, robotics. Hence, he is also regularly supervising minor assignments within Roboteam. He is interested in becoming a regular advisor of Roboteam Twente.
- dr.ir. K. Goulas (Constantinos): Constantinos is one of the three teachers who organise the PD&D minor at the UT. He teaches Materials & Manufacturing within the PD&D minro. His expertise field is material science, and more specifically, additive manufacturing and metallurgy, but he also works with polymers and has many contacts in the field. He also works at Fraunhofer.
- dr. A. Jalalian (Athena): Athena is the PD&D minor coordinator and contact point regarding PD&D and the progress of the students. She generally organises a mid-year check-up session with all PD&D students from Roboteam and their supervisor within the team.
- ing. N.T.M. Spikker (Norbert): Norbert has been the contact point of Roboteam Twente with CUBE during the academic year 2025-2026. The team can ask for advice and a brief training to safely use the machines. Please do not forget to thank Norbert and his team at the end of your collaboration with a cake (be creative).
- Srikrishna Mantravadi: Srikrishna is a system engineer at THALES who contacted Roboteam Twente in September 2025 because he was interested in sharing his robotics knowledge and learn new things. Unfortunately, we didn't manage to make full use of his expertise as the first year we decided to participate in the ERC was very chaotic, but he might be useful in terms of systems engineering and control.