Double Prize in Hungary: Maedcore, Robotics Startup of the Year

A Double Triumph on the International Stage

The European technology startup ecosystem is highly competitive. That is why standing out at an international event before a jury specialising in robotics, automation and technology investment carries particular weight. The competition was hosted in Budapest by the Design Terminal accelerator (now part of Civitta), with the recognition supported by Budapest Town Hall. Maedcore competed against teams from across Europe and took home two of the day’s most prestigious awards.

Award 1: Best Pitch of the Year

The Best Pitch Award recognises a team’s ability to communicate its value proposition clearly, convincingly and memorably to investors and potential clients.

In Maedcore’s case, the pitch presented how its robotic solutions for industrial inspection and maintenance solve a real and costly problem for companies: inspections in hazardous or hard-to-reach environments that currently require halting production, exposing workers to risk, or commissioning expensive and slow external services.

The jury particularly valued three aspects:

• Problem clarity — the presentation quantified the current cost of the problem for target industries.
• Solution differentiation — how Maedcore’s robotics outperforms existing alternatives.
• Scalability vision — the international growth roadmap and the sustainable business model.

Award 2: Fastest Growing Startup

The Fastest Growing Startup Award evaluates objective metrics: revenue growth, team expansion, new clients and markets, and product evolution. This recognition certifies that Maedcore not only has a good idea, but is executing it with measurable results.

The factors that drove this growth:

• Expansion of technological capabilities — new AI modules applied to inspection robotics.
• Client portfolio growth — entry into new industrial sectors.
• Internationalisation — first projects and partnerships outside Spain.
• Recognition and awards — the credibility effect that accolades generate in the B2B sales cycle.

The Robotic Solutions That Make It Possible

Maedcore’s industrial robotics solutions focus on two main applications:

Autonomous Inspection in Hazardous Environments: Drones and ground robots equipped with sensors, thermographic cameras and computer vision carry out inspections at industrial plants, energy infrastructure and hard-to-access structures without the need to halt production or expose workers to risks.

Robotic Predictive Maintenance: Combining robot mobility with machine learning algorithms, the system identifies anomalies in equipment during inspection and automatically generates maintenance orders, closing the loop from detection to intervention.

How the Autonomous Inspection System Works

Behind the award is a concrete engineering stack. The inspection system that earned the recognition combines four capabilities into a single autonomous loop:

1. Navigation. The robot moves through an industrial facility without a fixed track, combining LiDAR-based mapping with onboard odometry to localise itself and avoid obstacles. This is what lets it reach hazardous or hard-to-access areas a fixed sensor cannot cover.
2. Perception. Computer-vision and thermographic cameras capture the asset. A vision model flags anomalies — corrosion, surface cracks, thermal hotspots — that signal developing faults, classifying what it sees rather than just recording it.
3. Decision. Detections are scored and prioritised, so an operator sees “these three points need attention” instead of hours of raw footage. Borderline cases are surfaced for human review rather than silently discarded.
4. Reporting. The run ends in a structured inspection report with location-tagged findings and images — the same automatic-reporting discipline behind our Mapper inspection platform, where field data becomes a report with no manual post-processing.

The differentiator the jury valued is that all four layers are built in-house — mechanical platform, embedded firmware, computer vision, and reporting software — so they are engineered to work together rather than integrated from separate vendors.

The Impact for Industrial Companies

Clients that have implemented Maedcore’s robotic solutions report concrete benefits:

• Zero workplace accidents in inspection processes migrated to robotics.
• Up to 60% reduction in time spent on routine inspections.
• Early detection of up to 85% of equipment failures before they cause unplanned downtime.
• Savings on insurance and liability by eliminating worker exposure to hazardous environments.

The Road Ahead

These awards are recognition of the work done and an impetus to continue. Maedcore’s robotics roadmap includes:

• Expansion into European markets: Germany, France and Portugal are the next targets.
• Development of collaborative robots (cobots) for small and medium-sized industrial businesses.
• Deeper integration with digital twin platforms for predictive inspection.

Related Work

The award-winning inspection and safety approach builds on real Maedcore engineering. See the automated welding head case study for our work on industrial automation with integrated inspection, and the digital twin for UAV stabilisation for risk-free testing of control systems. Explore the full mechatronics services behind these projects.