Micron sponsored a UV Robot Challenge this summer and this article highlights the Micron Hackathon Winners. The hackathon was organized around the concept of developing an autonomous mobile robot that could disinfect a room. Teams were made up of students from around the world. Our founder and managing editor, Mike Oitzman, was invited to be one of the judges for the event.

There were 58 entrants total, and the quality of the projects consisted of everything from basic CAD drawings to fully prototyped solutions. While there were many similar design solutions, some teams thought “out-of-the-box” and presented some truly novel solutions. The Mobile Robot Guide has compiled all of the current solutions for sale in the Disinfection Solutions Buyers Guide, so reviewing the hackathon submissions was a natural extension of that effort. 

If you are looking for a robotics engineer or intern, we highly recommend that you peruse the projects and contact the participants of the projects that impress you. There are certainly some future robotics leaders who will emerge from this hackathon.

Note also that this was an open-source hackathon, so there is a ton of information to glean from the excellent research and design work produced by these participants.

The complete list of winners and links to all of the projects can be found on the Micron UV Robot Challenge website.

Micron Hackathon Winners

We’re excited to announce the winning teams:

Grand Prize: 1st Place ($10,000)

Micron Hackathon Winners

PROJECT:Fluoresce Robotics – Autonomous UVC Disinfection Robot

TEAM: Team KiNNeCTS: Kevin R, Nikhil Binu Thomas, Clayton Pereira, Tanya Mathur, Nikita Kulkarni, Suhail Nazeer

The Fluoresce Robot is an autonomous disinfection robot which uses UVC radiation to provide a germ-free environment.

This robot features UV light “arms” that swing out to cover horizontal surfaces, and the team demonstrated high quality CAD models and 3D animation of the solution in operation. Overall, a well executed project.

Grand Prize: 2nd Place ($5,000)

PROJECT:‘UVtar : The Savage Irradiator’ by Team Trishul

TEAM: Team Trishul: Shreya Santra, Abhishek Mishra, Sandeep Nayak, Anubrata Nath, Joshit Mohanty

The UVtar was a well engineered and documented project. The team demonstrated that they fully researched and calculated the necessary UV dosage to be effective. The rest of the project design was deeply detailed more than any other project. If you want a lesson on UV disinfection, read this project overview

Micron Hackathon Winners

Grand Prize: 3rd Place ($2,500)

PROJECT:G.L.A.M.O.U.R.o.U.S

TEAM: Team Infinite Urchin: 楊學翰, 邱吉鈞, 王友廷, 張家翔, 林棋竣, 張芯慈, Orange Hsu, 徐有齊, 岳長緯, 周柏融

This team demonstrated a lot of creativity, starting with the project name, an acronym for G.L.A.M.O.U.R.o.U.S :Germicidal Long-life Autonomous (using Melodic ROS) Overpowered UVC Robot of Unrivaled Supremacy.

This team actually built and demostrated a working prototype of their solution.

Other Winning Categories

Congratulations to all of other category winners:

Engineering Innovation Excellence 

PROJECT: LIDIA the Light Disinfecting Apparatus – TEAM: Team The 3D Engineers: David Ye, David Driscoll, Daniel Labdon

Best in Automation and Control

PROJECT: Autonomous UV Robot with SLAM – TEAM: Robin Kanattu Thomas, Alex m Sunny

Best in Safety Features

PROJECT: Charlie: The UV Disinfecting Robot – TEAM: Aditya Sripada

A complete listing of the winners and links to all of the project submission can be found on the hackathon website. We want to thank the Micron team for inviting The Mobile Robot Guide to participate as judge this year.