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) |
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!
Prizes
3D Printer
Pololu Kits
Amazon gift card
You get to keep your robot!
Best Use of Flow
$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
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
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
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
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
Computer Science Professor
Chris Damaren
Aerospace Professor
Michael Szpakowicz
Robotics SE @ Beaver Bot
Sunila Akbar
ECE Professor
Andrew Cording
Lead Hardware Engineer @ Aversan
Adheesh Boratkar
Hardware Engineer @ Aversan
Selin Ertan
Hardware Engineer @ Pulsenics
Nayma Piya
Hardware Engineer @ Intero Integrity
Olivier Lamarre
PhD @ UTIAS
Phillippe Nadeau
PhD @ UTIAS
Alaa Hatoum
MEng, ECE
David Chu
MSc, System Software (ECE)
Spencer Teetaert
MASc, Robotics
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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