Robot Hackathon: Harnessing Physical AI & Data
Build physical AI applications with real robot arms.
About the Event
Viam and MongoDB are 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 support from Viam experts 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
A MongoDB Atlas cluster for storing and querying your robot's data: sensor readings, grasp attempts, run logs and embeddings
We’ll provide a variety of objects for your robot to manipulate. You are encouraged to bring anything required for the project you have in mind.
Please bring your own laptop.
In your application, please summarize what project you have in mind.
Ideas from past events: training a VLA, playing chess, mixing a cocktail, quality inspection, drawing a picture, puzzle insertion, manipulating a robot arm using computer vision and hand gestures.
Build with MongoDB Atlas
Robots produce a lot of data, and the best teams use it.
Every team gets MongoDB Atlas to give their robot a memory. Some ideas:
Log every attempt (poses, gripper force, camera metadata, success or failure) and query it to tune your approach between runs
Use Atlas Vector Search to match what the camera sees against known objects, which helps with the recycling sort or open-track ideas
Store task plans, scene descriptions or past outcomes so an LLM-driven robot can retrieve context before it acts
Build a live dashboard of your benchmark runs
Using Atlas isn't required, but strong, creative uses of it will stand out to the judges.
Prizes
We'll award prizes to a total of three teams. Each member of a winning team will take home SO-101 pre-assembled robot kits, including: a leader arm, a follower arm, and a camera + Viam credits.
Gold: SO-101 arm + $5,000 in MongoDB Atlas credits and $5,000 in Viam credits
Silver: SO-101 arm + $2,500 in MongoDB Atlas credits and $2,500 in Viam credits
Bronze: SO-101 arm + $1,000 in MongoDB Atlas credits and $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
Thursday, October 29
9:00 AM: Check-in and breakfast
9:30 AM: Kickoff: Welcome & crash course on building with Viam and MongoDB
10:00 AM: Teams and hardware
10:30 AM: Hacking begins
1:00 PM: Lunch
6:00 PM: Dinner
9:00 PM: Hard close: Robots power down, doors close (no overnight hacking)
Friday, October 30
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)
Bonus: Some familiarity with MongoDB or document databases (not required, and mentors can help you get started)
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. Attendees must be approved in advance to participate.
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.
MongoDB: The developer data platform for storing, searching and analyzing your robot's data, including vector search for AI-powered retrieval.