Robot Hackathon: Fine Motor Skills

about this event

Build physical AI applications with real robot arms @ Viam!

About the Event: We're excited to host a two-day, hands-on hackathon for curious, ambitious builders who want to go deep on physical AI. You'll get a real robot arm and a dedicated Viam mentor throughout. No prior robotics experience is required, just an interest in physical AI and some software experience. Space is limited! Apply through this page. Applicants will be accepted on a rolling basis.

What You'll Build: Working in a team of 2-3, you'll build an end-to-end robotics application using Viam and a real robot arm. Each team will have access to: UFactory xArm or Universal Robots arm with a two-finger gripper attachment (feel free to also bring your own SO-101); Linux compute machine; RealSense D435 or Orbbec Astra 2 camera (fixed to arm); Webcams; A free Viam account. We'll provide blocks, cups, pens, paper, and other objects for your robot to interact with, or bring something you'd like to experiment with. Please bring your own laptop.

Challenges: Accepted participants will have two challenge tracks, which you'll select at kickoff: 1) Benchmark track: pick one of five tasks and get scored on it. Charger plugging: Sub-centimeter precision, occlusion at the moment of contact. Pouring liquid into a cup: Continuous control; a spill is a visible failure. Recycling sort: Perception in clutter. Egg transfer: Force control; failure is unambiguous and dramatic. Jenga pull: Precision plus force feedback; the tower falling ends your run. 2) Open track: bring your own idea and get judged on ambition and execution rather than a benchmark score. Ideas from past events: playing chess, mixing a cocktail, quality inspection, drawing a picture, puzzle insertion, setting a table, folding clothes.

Prizes: Winning teams take home robot arms. Gold: UFactory Lite6 arm for each team member + $5,000 in Viam credits. Silver: Seeed Studio reBot Arm B601-RS for each team member + $2,500 in Viam credits. Bronze: SO-101 arm for each team member + $1,000 in Viam credits.

Please bring your own laptop. We recommend taking our free online course Viam 101 (est time: 45-90mins) ahead of time. Even if you only go through the first lessons, it will help you get the hang of things quickly.

Schedule: Friday, September 18 — 9:00 AM: Check-in and breakfast; 9:30 AM: Kickoff: Welcome & crash course on building with Viam; 10:30 AM: Teams and hardware; 11:00 AM: Hacking begins; 1:00 PM: Lunch; 6:00 PM: Dinner; 9:00 PM: Hard close: Robots power down, doors close (no overnight hacking). Saturday, September 19 — 9:00 AM: Doors open, breakfast; 9:30 AM: Hacking resumes; 12:30 PM: Lunch; 3:30 PM: Demos and drinks; 5:00 PM: Awards; 6:00 PM: Event concludes.

What Skills You Need: No robotics experience required, but you should be comfortable with: Coding: Python, Go, TypeScript/JavaScript, or C++; Linux: Using SSH and running basic terminal commands; JSON: Reading and editing configuration files; Git: Basic workflows so your team can build together; Bonus: knowing how to plug in a pre-trained vision model (like YOLO or OpenCV) to help the robot see and identify objects (not required).

Before the Event: We recommend taking our free online course Viam 101 (est time: 45-90mins) ahead of time. Even the first few lessons will help you get the hang of things quickly.

How to Join: Space is limited! Apply through this page. Applicants will be accepted on a rolling basis. We'll select a curated group of ambitious software developers and send official confirmations to accepted participants.

Presented By: Viam — The robotics software platform we'll use to configure, control, and deploy models to your robot. Viam makes it easy to get a robot up and running quickly.

tracks

schedule

prizes