Prizes

The competition offers up to $12,000 in cash prizes.

Overall Awards

    • First Place — $5,000.

    • Second Place — $3,000.

    • Third Place — $2,000.

Special Awards

    • Best Use of COOL Award — $1,000.

    • Agentic Vision Award — $1,000.

An entry may receive no more than one Overall Award and may also receive one or both Special Awards. Each Special Award will be determined independently under its own rubric and will go to the highest-scoring eligible entry; if no entry satisfies the published qualifying requirements, that Special Award may remain unawarded. OpenCV will send prizes to each Overall Award and each Special Award within 30 days of the final judging decision, provided the potential winner timely completes required eligibility and tax documentation. For a team entry, the team representative will receive payment on the team’s behalf and is responsible for distributing it. Prizes are non-transferable by the winner. Sponsor in its sole discretion has the right to make a prize substitution of equivalent or greater value.

Judging

Judges will be selected from the AI and computer vision community. AWS may nominate up to two judges. Eligible final entries will be scored on the following 100-point rubric:

Each final entry will receive at least two independent, conflict-free scores. Final rankings will use the average of those scores. Judges must disclose conflicts and recuse themselves. Entries opting into a Special Award will be scored separately under that award’s rubric.

Overall Rubric

    • Technical execution — weighted 30%: correctness and depth of the OpenCV 5 implementation, architecture, reliability, and evaluation.

    • Innovation — weighted 20%: originality and thoughtful use of computer vision or AI.

    • Real-world impact — weighted 20%: importance of the problem, usefulness, and evidence of potential benefit.

    • User experience — weighted 10%: usability, accessibility, and quality of interaction.

    • Documentation and presentation — weighted 10%: clarity of the report, code, architecture, instructions, and video.

    • Cloud delivery, reproducibility, and responsible operation — weighted 10%: AWS deployment quality, repeatability, observability, security, and responsible-use practices.

COOL or agentic methods are not required for the Overall Awards. When present, judges will credit them within the applicable overall criteria only to the extent that they improve the project.

Best Use of COOL Award Rubric

    • Verified COOL integration on AWS Graviton, or on the Arm component of a documented hybrid architecture — weighted 30%.

    • Architecture and technical quality — weighted 25%.

    • Measured performance, cost, reliability, or developer-productivity value — weighted 20%.

    • Innovation — weighted 15%.

    • Reproducibility and demonstration — weighted 10%.

Agentic Vision Award Rubric

    • Substantive OpenCV 5 and agent integration — weighted 30%.

    • Orchestration and appropriate autonomy — weighted 25%.

    • Task effectiveness and evaluation — weighted 20%.

    • Failure handling, observability, security, and human control — weighted 15%.

    • User experience, documentation, and demonstration — weighted 10%.

Judges’ decisions are final. Overall-ranking ties will be resolved first by Technical Execution, then Real-World Impact, then a conflict-free additional judge scoring all tied entries under the same rubric. Special-award ties will be resolved by the first criterion in the applicable rubric, then the second, then a conflict-free additional judge.

Ownership, Use, and Privacy

Participants retain all right, title, and interest in their entries and underlying intellectual property, including source code, models, model weights, datasets, inventions, methods, documentation, images, and know-how, subject to any third-party licenses they use. Except for the license below, participation in the competition and submission of materials do not transfer ownership of that intellectual property to The Open Source Vision Foundation (OpenCV) or Amazon Web Services (AWS).

By submitting any proposal, report, presentation, or video in connection with the competition (collectively, “Submitted Materials”), each participant represents that it has the necessary rights and grants OpenCV and AWS, each independently, a perpetual, irrevocable (to the fullest extent permitted by law), worldwide, royalty-free, fully paid-up, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, reproduce, host, store, edit, modify, adapt, translate, create derivative works from, publish, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, promote, and otherwise use the Submitted Materials, in whole or in part, in any media now known or later developed, for any lawful commercial or noncommercial purpose, without further notice, approval, attribution, or compensation.

The license applies only to the Submitted Materials themselves. It does not grant rights to access, distribute, or use private source code, model weights, datasets, credentials, confidential materials, or other underlying project assets merely referenced, linked to, described, depicted, or demonstrated in the Submitted Materials, unless those materials are themselves included in a submission and the participant has the right to grant that license.

Personal data may be processed and shared among the contest administrator, OpenCV, and AWS only as reasonably necessary to administer the competition, verify eligibility, communicate with participants, and deliver benefits or prizes. Any use of participant data for unrelated marketing requires a separate, informed opt-in.

Eligibility and Fair Play

    • Participants must be at least 13 years old. Anyone who has not reached the legal age of majority where they live must obtain permission from a parent or legal guardian and complete any required platform forms.

    • Each team member must satisfy all eligibility requirements. A team must designate one representative authorized to submit and receive notices and prizes.

    • Entries must not manipulate registration, voting, judging, platform traffic, or contest operations through bots, fraud, hacking, or other abuse.

    • Disclosed agents and automated programs that are integral to the submitted project are allowed and encouraged; the prohibition above applies to abuse of the competition, not legitimate project functionality.

    • Employees and contractors directly involved in administering or judging the competition, and their immediate household members, are not eligible.

Responsible and Ethical Use

Entries must be safe, lawful, respectful, and appropriate for public demonstration. Judges may reject an entry that:

    • Uses data, models, or media without the necessary rights or consent.

    • Creates material safety, privacy, security, discrimination, or surveillance risks without appropriate safeguards.

    • Contains unlawful, defamatory, sexually explicit, gratuitously violent, hateful, harassing, or otherwise abusive content.

    • Misrepresents capabilities, results, benchmarks, or the role of human review.

    • Violates applicable OpenCV, AWS, Devpost, or third-party terms.

Changes, Disqualification, and Award Administration

    • The organizers may disqualify an ineligible, incomplete, misleading, unsafe, unlawful, or rules-violating entry.

    • The organizers may modify, suspend, or cancel the competition when necessary to preserve fairness, security, or legal compliance, and will communicate material changes through official channels.

    • Potential winners must respond to notification and complete requested eligibility, release, and tax documentation by the stated deadline or risk replacement by the next eligible entry.

    • Winners are responsible for applicable taxes. Team members are responsible for any internal division of a team prize.

    • Final participant-facing governing-law, venue, eligibility, platform, and privacy terms will appear in the Devpost Official Rules before registration opens; those rules control if this overview conflicts with them.

Limitations of Liability

By entering this Competition, you agree that the Promotion Entities, and their respective parent, subsidiary, and affiliated companies, and any other organizations responsible for sponsoring, fulfilling, administering, advertising or promoting the Competition, and all of their respective past and present officers, directors, employees, agents and representatives (hereafter the “Released Parties”) shall not be liable to you under any cause of action or theory of liability relating to the Competition, even if a party has been advised of the possibility of such damages, for (a) indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or exemplary damages, or (b) lost profits, revenues, customers, opportunities, or goodwill. In any case, the Promotion Entities and their affiliates’ and licensors’ aggregate liability under these Terms and Conditions will not exceed USD $100. The limitations in this paragraph shall apply only to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law.