Sportbot received silver recognition at Inovacije Zasavja 2026 for its smart robot for tennis and padel training. For the team, the award is more than a certificate. It marks the point where a moving ball-machine idea has grown from rough prototypes into a serious product direction for clubs, coaches, and players.
Why this recognition matters
The regional innovation awards are organized around real products, technical progress, and the people building them. Sportbot was recognized in that setting as a smart training robot for tennis and padel, which is exactly the problem the company has been working on from the beginning: make ball-machine training move closer to real sport.
The public GZS/Media announcement lists Sportbot and Katapult d.o.o. among the 2026 Zasavje innovation recipients. That external recognition matters because it places Sportbot next to other companies building practical, technical innovations from the region.
From prototype to serious product
Sportbot started as a clear training frustration. Static ball machines can repeat a shot, but tennis and padel are not static sports. Players move, recover, read the next ball, and react to changing court situations. Sportbot’s product direction is built around that difference.
The silver recognition is therefore a checkpoint in a longer transition: from an early moving-machine prototype into a product that can be explained to coaches, tested with players, adapted for padel, and brought into real club and event environments.
The mechanical work behind the movement
Žan Črne contributed as a co-innovator through mechanical design. That part of Sportbot is central, because the machine is not only a launcher. It has to move on court, stay stable, remain practical to handle, and support repeatable training situations without becoming too complex for everyday use.
Good mechanical design is what makes the idea usable. It connects the training vision to the physical product: how the machine moves, how it carries the launching system, how it survives real court use, and how coaches can trust it during practice.
Katapult’s role from the beginning
Katapult d.o.o. helped Sportbot from the early stages as an incubator, technical partner, and practical product-building environment. That support included workshop and manufacturing context, mentoring, and the kind of ecosystem that helps a prototype become something a team can keep improving.
For Sportbot, this mattered because the product sits between sport, mechanics, electronics, manufacturing, and user experience. Building that kind of machine requires more than one good idea. It requires people and partners who can help turn tests, failures, and small improvements into a product path.
What the award says about Sportbot
The recognition is not the finish line. It is a signal that the work is becoming legible outside the court: a Slovenian team building a moving training partner for tennis and padel, with a product story that connects engineering, coaching, and real player movement.
Sportbot’s next step is the same one that has guided the project from the beginning: keep testing with coaches and players, keep improving the machine, and keep making training more realistic than a static feed from one fixed point.
