Robotics Hardware Hackathon Demo Day: Saturday Robotics × Robotics Center. SF 10/24 | Reading Club #35
Build this week. Demo on Saturday. Real robots, frontier models.
Frontier models can plan, write code and drive a computer. The open question is what happens when one has to close a gripper on a real object.
Format update: we've adjusted the format this time. Following requests from many of you, and with so many strong proposals and only a limited set of robots on site, the hackathon is now a take-home build plus a demo day, so every team gets more time and more room to explore. Hacking starts on Tuesday, Oct 20 and runs until 2:00 pm on Saturday, Oct 24. Teams then present to the judges from 2:00 to 5:00 pm at Robotics Center's SF lab, live or by video if your setup can't travel. Projects you've already been tinkering with at home are very welcome.
Location
San Francisco · Robotics Center
Dates
Hacking: Tuesday, Oct 20 → Saturday, Oct 24, 2:00 pm Presentations & judging: Saturday, Oct 24, 2:00–5:00 pm
Who it's for
Researchers, founders, engineers and students working on robot learning, VLA policies, world models, teleoperation and data collection, and anyone with a robot project they've been building on the side. Form your own team of 1–5 any way you like, or come solo and find teammates on Discord or WhatsApp (links below).
How it works
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Build: from Tuesday, Oct 20. Team up freely and work wherever you are, on whatever hardware you have: arms, hands, mobile bases, humanoids, sensors, teleop rigs. If your setup can't travel, record a 2–3 minute demo video.
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Submit: by Saturday, Oct 24, 2:00 pm PT, when hacking ends. Project name, team members, a 2–3 sentence description, and a video link if you're presenting by video: [submission form link] - Present: Saturday, Oct 24, 2:00–5:00 pm at Robotics Center's SF lab. Show your demo live or play your video, and take questions from the judges.
Saturday, Oct 24
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[1:30 pm] · Doors open, set up your hardware
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2:00 pm · Hacking ends, submissions close
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2:00–5:00 pm · Presentations & judging [with sponsor talks]
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[5:00 pm] · Awards and networking
Tracks & prizes — announced this week. Expect tracks around dexterous manipulation and teleoperation & data[plus Waddle Labs track for the best project built with Waddle's robot-use agents].
What to bring — your robot if it travels, a laptop with your demo or video, and anything you need to set up. [Robotics Center's robots will be on display at the lab.]
🏆 PRIZES & AWARDS
Every team that demos on Saturday, live or by video, is eligible for every award. Winners are announced on stage at demo day and receive a certificate signed by the program chairs.
OVERALL 🥇 First Place Award: grand prize for the best overall project 🥈 Second Place Award: second place overall 🥉 Third Place Award: third place overall
CATEGORY AWARDS ⚙️ Best Technical Achievement Award: the most technically ambitious, rigorously engineered project 💡 Most Novel Idea Award: the most original idea, one that made us see robots differently 🚀 Best Real-World Deployment Award: the project closest to working reliably outside the lab 🌐 Best World Model Project Award: the most compelling use of world models, simulation or learned dynamics on a robot 🔧 Best Hardware Hack Award: the most creative build, modification or integration on real robot hardware ❤️ People's Choice Award: voted by demo-day attendees as their favorite project
SPONSOR AWARDS 🤖 Waddle Labs Award: the best project built with Waddle Labs' robot-use agents, judged by the Waddle Labs team 🏅 Sponsor Awards: sponsors name and judge their own award, such as "Best use of [platform]", presented on stage at demo day
HOW OVERALL PLACES ARE JUDGED Technical depth 30% · Novelty 25% · Real-world impact 25% · Demo quality 20%
Category awards are chosen by the judging panel, the Waddle Labs Award by the Waddle Labs team, and People's Choice by attendee vote. Teams keep full ownership of everything they build.
PROGRAM CHAIRS Junfan Zhu & Aurora Feng, Saturday Robotics · Jerry Huang, Robotics Center · Pinxin Liu, Rhoda AI · Hanming Ye, Waddle Labs
⚖️ JUDGES & PROGRAM CHAIRS
Projects are judged by a panel of researchers and founders working on robot learning, world models and robotics infrastructure:
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Junfan Zhu: CEO of Saturday Robotics, San Francisco's weekly research forum on robotics, world models and embodied AI (30+ sessions, 3,700+ subscribers). Organizer of the ACM SIGGRAPH 2026 Birds of a Feather session "World Models for Robotics: Bridging Graphics, Simulation, and Physical Intelligence"; Program Committee member and session chair of the PWMS2026 workshop (Physical World Models for Scaling Embodied AI) at IEEE/RSJ IROS 2026; invited speaker and moderator at AUTONOMOUS 2026. Reviewer for NeurIPS 2026, EMNLP 2026, AAAI 2027 and the ACM CAIS 2026 Workshop; book-proposal reviewer on world models for Manning Publications; judge at the Embodied Metal Hackathon 2026 and the Silicon Valley Robotics Fair 2026. Physical AI researcher on world-action models, sim-to-real transfer and cross-embodiment policy learning; co-author of the Agents' Last Exam benchmark (NeurIPS 2026) and the IEDD driving dataset (Scientific Data, Nature Portfolio).
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Jerry Huang: Founder of Robotics Center, the San Francisco robotics lab co-producing this hackathon, offering robot hardware, teleoperation data collection and real-robot evaluation, with a second lab in Boston.
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Aurora Feng: Founder & CEO of Neural Motion, which makes robot teleoperation data reusable across hardware. Co-host of Saturday Robotics.
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Pinxin Liu: Member of Technical Staff at Rhoda AI, building video generative models for robotics. Previously a research scientist intern at Meta Reality Labs and Flawless; first author of GestureLSM (ICCV 2025). Saturday Robotics Best Hot Take Award Winner (2026).
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Hanming Ye: Co-founder of Waddle Labs (YC S26), whose AI agents write, run and refine control code for robots.
Hosts
Saturday Robotics — Robotics Research Forum: a 3,700+ member Silicon Valley forum running a weekly robotics & world-models reading group, with researchers and founders from Google DeepMind, NVIDIA, Physical Intelligence, Generalist, Sunday, OpenAI, Meta FAIR, Tesla, Figure, Skild AI, Stanford, Berkeley, CMU, MIT, Bay Area top robotics startups and top VCs.
Robotics Center of Silicon Valley: a San Francisco robotics infrastructure hub — hardware, data collection, fleet teleoperation and education for research and industry teams — with a showroom and lab at 90 Welsh St.
Sponsors & partners
[Waddle Labs logo & blurb]
Want to back a prize track or give teams credits for build week? There's still time. Talk to us: [email protected] (Junfan Zhu) · [email protected] (Aurora Feng) · [email protected] (Jerry Huang, Robotics Center)
We're raising sponsorship for prizes, compute and operations, and every tier is open.
Who we're talking to: OpenAI — the GPT-6 Astra team, partnerships & community, and OpenAI Startups — plus frontier labs, cloud and inference providers, robotics companies, and funds backing physical AI. Warm intros are as welcome as cheques.
Title Partner — $50,000"Presented by" naming and logo lockup across the poster, event page, stage and recap · opening remarks · judge seat · dedicated demo bay · hiring booth · 10 guest passes
Gold — $20,000Logo on poster, event page and stage loop · 20-minute tech talk or workshop · judge seat · demo table · 6 guest passes · recruiting access
Silver — $10,000Logo on poster and event page · mentor slot during the build · recruiting table · 4 guest passes
Prize Track — $5,000 (per award)Name and present an award (e.g. "Best Dexterous Manipulation") · judge seat · logo beside that track · 2 guest passes
In-kindGPU hours, inference or API credits, model access, cloud infrastructure, sensors and spare parts, travel stipends for teams, or food and coffee for the floor — each recognised at the cash tier matching fair value. What moves the needle most is compute credits and cash; the robots themselves are already covered by Robotics Center.
Where sponsorship goes: prize pool and per-track bounties · compute and API credits handed to teams during the build · meals and coffee for the full day · hardware consumables and teleop rigs · recap video and technical write-ups.
Join us
Saturday Robotics WhatsApp:
https://chat.whatsapp.com/HYxhjyaBbBuFZUlrV0AIaV?s=cl&p=i&mlu=0&ilr=4
Join Discord Community
Join Discord Server
Follow Saturday Robotics
/saturdayrobotic
Follow YouTube
/saturdayrobotic
Subscribe to Luma Calendar
https://luma.com/saturdayrobotic
Follow Robotics Center's Linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/roboticscenter/
Follow Robotics Center's X:
Follow Robotics Center's Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/@roboticscentersv
Applications
Registration is approval-based. Tell us what you'd build and which hardware you want — capacity is limited by the number of robots in the room.
Community-run event. Not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by OpenAI.
