2020 HACKADAY PRIZE REVEALS FOUR OPEN CHALLENGES AND NEW DREAM TEAM PROGRAM
The 2020 Hackaday Prize begins right now. Our global engineering challenge seeks solutions to real-world problems. If you like to come up with creative solutions to tough problems, four non-profits can use your help. We need hackers, designers, and engineers throughout the world to work on designs for conservation, disaster relief, renewable resources, and assistive devices.
This is the seventh year of the Hackaday Prize, and like past years we want to see your ideas take shape, so share your design process in detail as a project page on Hackaday.io. Over $200,000 in prizes are at stake, with a $50,000 prize for the all around best solution which will then be designed for manufacture at Supplyframe’s DesignLab, produced in a limited run, and deployed in the field.
New this year is our partnership with non-profits that have each outlined challenges they are facing. Eight projects, one top finisher, and one runner up from each of the four categories of challenges, will receive $10,000 and $3,000 respectively. As with previous years, the bootstrap round offers some seed money for getting your prototype off the ground: up to $500 for each of the top twenty during early entry judging. There’s even a $5,000 wildcard prize for entries that don’t specifically address challenges from the four categories. Here’s a taste of the categories you can work on:
Develop solutions to combat invasive species in marine and island environments, and help craft tools for protecting our natural ocean landscapes
Low cost tools for use in the field like a heat sealers/welders, and medical devices like IV fluid warmers
Adaptive technologies for workstations like trackballs, joysticks, and large button controllers
Modular add-ons for earthen housing for connectivity, light, heating, and water storage
Here’s one thing we’ve never been able to do before: provide a stipend to work for two months on an engineering “Dream Team” in these areas. Our partner organizations need great engineers, and we can make that happen. The Hackaday Prize includes team microgrants of $3,000 per month available for each of twelve engineers selected to work full time in June and July on the Dream Team challenges. Let’s meet the non-profits and find what this new bit is all about.
MEET THE NON-PROFITS AND THE DREAM TEAM CHALLENGES
The people who understand the problems best are those who face them in the field. We’re proud to partner with four non-profit organziations this year who have their finger on the pulse of where help is needed.
Conservation X Labs
Faced with the sixth mass extinction, Conservation X Labs focuses on solving the drivers of this extinction, promoting conservation systems that protect wildlife health and improve the ecosystem.
Conservation X Labs’ Dream Team challenge is to design systems for reducing the amount of lost or abandoned items in the world’s oceans, particularly in the fishing industry.
Field Ready
This year we’ve seen how difficult it becomes when supply chains break down. Field Ready focuses on rapid manufacturing in the field, helping with designs for disaster recovery or humanitarian crisis.
Field Ready’s Dream Team challenge is to design a tracking system that evaluates effectiveness of solutions, helps ensure quality control, and makes repair and replication of existing solutions possible.
United Cerebral Palsy LA
Advancing the independence and productivity of people with developmental and intellectual disabilities is the mission of United Cerebral Palsy of Los Angeles.
UCPLA’s Dream Team challenge is to design a universal remote for those with physical challenges that will easily connect to devices whose interfaces are otherwise difficult to use.
CalEarth
With millions of refugees and displaced persons throughout the world, there is an accelerating housing crisis. CalEarth focuses on sustainable buildings to address this need, using earth bag architecture known as SuperAdobe.
CalEarth’s Dream Team challenge is to solutions to the high labor cost of building SuperAbode, which is the most predominant bottleneck in building these structures in large numbers.
Each of these organizations will receive a $10,000 donation as part of their partnership with the 2020 Hackaday Prize.
WE ALL NEED PURPOSE
We spend a lot of time learning about hardware, design, manufacturing, programming, and myriad other artistic and technical skills that are the bedrock of our creativity. There is no greater satisfaction that aiming all of those skills at a purpose that makes a difference. It might make people happy, more comfortable, able to live a better life today, or able to live in a healthier world tomorrow.
This is your time to build with purpose. We know these are problems in need of solutions right now. We don’t know who will be able to solve them, but hope it will be you. Begin your 2020 Hackaday Prize right now!
