UTRA Hacks is Canada's emerging 2-day robotics hackathon hosted by the University of Toronto Robotics Association (UTRA) and the Robotics Institute. We aim to inspire creativity, enable collaboration and foster skill development. Participants connect face-to-face, collaborate with global students, and engage with industry leaders and mentors. The event sparks inspiration and opens minds to endless possibilities. Hackers of all experience levels can join workshops, tech talks, and career sessions to learn something new. UTRA Hacks supports participants by providing necessary equipment, so that the sky's the limit!

NOTE: Registering on Devpost does not give you access to the event, you must have been admitted to UTRA Hacks 2024 through our application process in order to attend.

Schedule

Saturday, January 20th
Time Event Location
9:30 AM

Registration Opens!

 Myhal 1st floor lobby
10:15 AM Registration Closes  Myhal 1st floor lobby
10:30 AM Opening Ceremony  MY150
11:00 AM HACKING BEGINS! N/A
11:00 AM Form your team with Chris from MLH! MY150
11:00 AM - 1:30 PM Robotics kit pickup Myhal arena (level 0)
12:30 PM - 1:30 PM Scaling in Robotics: Challenges & AWS Solutions - Johnny Wang, SDE @ Amazon Robotics MY580
1:00 PM - 3:00 PM Lunch Myhal 1st floor lobby
2:30 PM - 3:30 PM Simulation and Localization for Autonomous Robots - Andrei Bârsan, Senior Research Scientist @ Waabi MY580
3:30 PM - 4:30 PM Arduino Workshop - Yifei Zhou from UTRA Robonars MY150
4:00 PM - 4:30 PM Hack with GitHub Copilot - Chris from MLH MY580
5:00 PM Seeing the World like an Autonomous Car - Daniil Lisus, PhD Candidate @ UofT Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) MY580
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM Dinner 1st floor lobby
7:00 PM Slideshow Karaoke with Chris from MLH! MY580
7:30 PM Robots on the Big Screen: WALLE Film screening MY815
8:00 PM Sleeping area opens MY360
Sunday, January 21st
Time Event Location
9:00 AM - 11:00 AM Breakfast Myhal 1st floor lobby
10:30 AM

Hands-On Computer Vision: From Coding Basics to Advanced Techniques - Elijah Kurien, SWE @ UWaterloo

MY580
12:00 PM Cracking the Amazon Coding Interview - Justin Gonzalez, SDE @ Amazon Robotics MY580
1:30 PM HACKING ENDS + DEVPOST SUBMISSION DEADLINE! N/A
1:30 PM - 3:30 PM Lunch Myhal 1st floor lobby
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM Judging + Demos You will be assigned to a judging room/area in Myhal! 
3:30 PM Industry Fireside Chat - Lilly Yu, SDE @ Amazon Robotics & Ali Seifeldin, SE/PM @ Intel MY580
5:00 PM Closing Ceremony MY150
6:00 PM - 7:00 PM Robot dismantle & hardware return Myhal arena (level 0)
Stay tuned on the Discord server to watch for some surprise activities throughout the hackathon! NOTE: the entire hackathon will take place in the Myhal Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship ("Myhal") at the University of Toronto. (The room location of various events are listed as "MY" + number).

Requirements

What to Submit

On Devpost, submit a readme describing what your robot is and how you built in. In-person, you will be assigned to a judging area where you will either present a demo and presentation, or test your robot through a setup of mini-challenges!

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$CAD 2,170 in prizes
3D Printer
1 winner

Pololu Kits
1 winner

Amazon gift card
2 winners

You get to keep your robot!
2 winners

Best Use of Flow
1 winner

$200 USD in FLOW Token
Flow is a public, decentralized, layer-one blockchain designed for creating limitless Web3 apps for mainstream adoption. Flow empowers hackers like you to build decentralized applications and share them with the world. Write safe and readable smart contracts with Cadence and explore the potential of composable, on-chain logic. With SDKs in multiple languages like Javascript, Go, Kotlin, Python, Swift, Unity, you can jump in and start your hack using Flow this weekend for a chance to win $200 USD worth of FLOW token for each member of your team!

Best .Tech Domain Name
1 winner

Blue Snowball Microphone & a Free .Tech Domain Name for Life!
Make your Team's Achievements timeless: Win a .Tech Domain Name for Life to Showcase and Expand Your Project, Plus 4 Blue Snowball Mics for Effortless Collaboration on Zoom, empowering you to build even more cool things together!

Best Use of Kintone
1 winner

Breadboard IoT Kit
Still not sure what backend to use in your hack? Kintone is a low-code web database that lets you set up your backend in minutes. It's beginner friendly, allowing you to customize your Kintone app using nothing but JavaScript and HTML. If you're interested in IoT, your team can snag a FREE microcontroller by signing up for Kintone and visiting the MLH table. If you use Kintone in your hackathon project, you'll have a chance to win a breadboard IoT kit to power up the hardware hacking for each member of your team!

Best Use of AI in Education
1 winner

TickTime Pomodoro Timer
Artificial Intelligence (AI) models, such as large language models (LLMs), are transforming how we interact with computers. During this weekend's hackathon, we want you to apply AI towards improving education to produce tools that support the quality, accessibility, and equitability of learning in today's classrooms. You can use AI to address any challenge teachers and students face, such as curriculum planning, question selection, teacher training, content generation, personalized feedback, automated grading and more.

For this challenge, we encourage you to draw on your own educational experiences and propose technical solutions to problems you've regularly encountered as students — after all, you are the best to know where our education system needs improvement. Design impactful and effective AI tools for education for a chance to win a TickTime Pomodoro Timer!

Best Use of Starknet
1 winner

Starknet Care Package for Coders

Starknet is redefining the very notion of Web3 by tackling one of the most intimidating technical challenges in the industry - scaling a blockchain while maintaining its security and decentralization.

Starknet was the first general purpose ZK-Rollup service on Ethereum in Feb. 2022, and has proved its potential to be a market leader. Essentially, it increases the processing speed, while reducing the cost of operating on the Ethereum blockchain.

As a result, we are seeing a variety of “traditional” tech businesses - payments / social media / AI / online gaming - now being integrated with blockchains using our technology.

Moreover, the Starknet community is a growing pool of global talent - from feisty college students to some of the most illustrious PhDs in the world.

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

Judges

Michael Guerzhoy

Michael Guerzhoy
Computer Science Professor

Chris Damaren

Chris Damaren
Aerospace Professor

Michael Szpakowicz

Michael Szpakowicz
Robotics SE @ Beaver Bot

Sunila Akbar

Sunila Akbar
ECE Professor

Andrew Cording

Andrew Cording
Lead Hardware Engineer @ Aversan

Adheesh Boratkar

Adheesh Boratkar
Hardware Engineer @ Aversan

Selin Ertan

Selin Ertan
Hardware Engineer @ Pulsenics

Nayma Piya

Nayma Piya
Hardware Engineer @ Intero Integrity

Olivier Lamarre

Olivier Lamarre
PhD @ UTIAS

Phillippe Nadeau

Phillippe Nadeau
PhD @ UTIAS

Alaa Hatoum

Alaa Hatoum
MEng, ECE

David Chu

David Chu
MSc, System Software (ECE)

Spencer Teetaert

Spencer Teetaert
MASc, Robotics

Chris Baudouin

Chris Baudouin
Major League Hacking

Judging Criteria

  • JUDGING CRITERIA - AV CHALLENGE
  • Tasks:
    Intact Components, Obstacle Collision, Human Intervention.
  • Quality of Robot:
    Build Soundness, Visual Appeal.
  • Team Flare:
    Personal Touch Integration.
  • You Made It!
    Punctual Judging Arrival.
  • JUDGING CRITERIA - OPEN CHALLENGE
  • Prototype:
    Construction Quality, Demonstrative Success, Robot's Use of Perception, Reasoning, and Actuation.
  • Pitch:
    Problem Pervasiveness, Solution Feasibility, Realistic Integrability, Robot's Use of Perception, Reasoning, and Actuation.

Questions? Email the hackathon manager

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