Build a Robot Boat in 48 Hours at This San Francisco Hackathon

A group called Silicon Mtn is hosting a Maritime Dual-Use Hackathon in San Francisco from October 16 to 18. A hackathon is a sprint where teams build something working in a weekend, usually with lots of coffee. Here, the subject is ocean tech: robots and software for boats and ships. You can apply alone or with up to five people, and you don't need to be an engineer at a big company — the organizers say they want builders who work on marine robotics or the small computers inside machines.

The weekend has three challenges to pick from. One is a "Software-Defined Vessel" — basically a boat whose behavior is controlled by software, a step toward ships that drive themselves. The second is optimizing how pipes are laid out inside a vessel, which sounds dull but saves shipyards real money. The third is cybersecurity for the industrial systems that run ships and ports, and figuring out how far damage spreads when one of those systems is attacked.

Why should you care if you don't build boats? Because ships carry roughly 80% of everything you buy, and shipping has a serious shortage of people who understand both software and the sea. The organizers have built two on-ramps beyond the weekend: a selective six-week free accelerator with Fincantieri, one of the world's largest shipbuilders, and an optional scouting track that hands your profile to partner companies hiring.

Winning team members each receive a Qualcomm-powered laptop, and Qualcomm and Arduino — the maker of easy-to-program circuit boards — are the main technology sponsors, so hardware will likely be available to use. The catch: this is a weekend commitment in San Francisco, and spots are selective rather than guaranteed.