Robot Brunch Hackathon with UFactory & Viam
Build a working robot in one morning @ Viam!
About the Event
Not your typical brunch club. Not your typical robotics workshop.
We’re excited to host a hands-on morning for curious, ambitious builders who want to experience real-world robotics. You’ll get a rare opportunity to control a robot arm, train your own perception model, and deploy it to a real robot.
No prior robotics experience is required, just an interest in physical AI and some software experience.
What You'll Build
Working with a partner, you’ll build an end-to-end robotics application using Viam and a UFactory xArm.
Each pair will have access to:
UFactory X-ARM with a two finger gripper attachment
Linux compute machine
RealSense D435 or Orbbec Astra 2 camera (fixed to arm)
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.
By the end of the morning, you’ll have built and deployed your own AI-powered robotics application on a real robot.
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
Please bring your own laptop.
Schedule
9:30 AM: Check-in, breakfast & partner formation
10:00 AM: Kickoff: Welcome & a crash course on building with Viam
10:30 AM: Experimentation begins: start building with your robot arm
12:00 PM: Lunch
1:30 PM: Closing: Retros, project sharing & final remarks
2:00 PM: Event concludes
How to Join
Space is limited! Apply through this page to attend. We’ll select a curated group of ambitious software developers and send official confirmations to accepted participants. Participants will work in pairs, with one robot arm available per pair.
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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.
UFactory — Collaborative robot arms built for researchers and builders. The xArm platform is precise, open source, programmable, and designed to make real-world robotics experimentation accessible.