Robot Hackathon: Fine Motor Skills
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 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
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.