Alison Cossette@alison_cossette680

There are 240 million children worldwide living with learning disabilities, and many struggle to access physical books independently. Ladybug: The Robot Reader was built to change that. Ladybug is an autonomous robotic system that reads physical books aloud from cover to cover with no human intervention. Built on the SO-101 robotic arm, it uses a perception-action loop powered by Claude Vision to assess the workspace, decide what to do next, and execute — opening a closed book, reading each page spread, turning pages, and closing the book when finished. Claude Vision analyzes camera frames to classify page types (content, title page, table of contents, index, blank) and extract text. ElevenLabs then streams natural-sounding speech in real time using a sentence-level prefetch pipeline so audio plays continuously without pauses. Motor skills — opening, closing, and page turning — are trained using ACT (Action Chunking with Transformers) policies. The system includes intelligent retry logic with frame hashing to detect failed page turns and automatically retry them. Ladybug supports multiple reading modes: verbose (reads everything), skim (headers and titles only), and silent (text extraction only). It also features a web dashboard for remote monitoring and a dry-run mode for testing without hardware. Our mission is accessibility in education — putting an autonomous reading companion in every special education classroom. We want 1,000,000 lady bug robot readers available to children around the world.

📅 May 11–19, 2026 • May 11 – 19: Online Build Phase. • May 18 (Hybrid Build Day – Online & Onsite) • May 19 (Demos & Awards – Online & Onsite) 🌍 Hybrid event. Join online from anywhere or build onsite at the venue. 🏆 Winners will be announced live on stage at the AI & Big Data Expo North America on May 19 📍 On-site Venue (May 18–19): San Jose McEnery Convention Center, CA, USA 🤝 Join solo or with a team. 🏆Compete for a $10,000 prize pool 🧑‍💻 Apply now to design, prototype, and showcase enterprise-ready innovation.

In this hybrid hackathon powered by Arc and Circle, developers will build the next generation of Agentic economic applications using Circle’s Nanopayments infrastructure with settlement on Arc in USDC. For the first time, high-frequency, usage-based transactions between users, APIs, and AI agents can operate without gas overhead eroding margin. Arc provides stablecoin-native settlement with predictable, dollar-denominated USDC fees and deterministic, sub-second finality — enabling real-time coordination and economically viable per-action pricing at scale. 📅 April 20 – 26, 2026 • Apr 20 – 25 (Online): Submit projects by Apr 25. • Apr 25 (On-site Build – SF, CA): Teams refine projects. • Apr 26 (On-site Demos & Awards – SF, CA): Live pitches & winners announced. Get guidance from Arc and Circle experts through on-site support. 📍 On-site Venue (April 25-26): MindsDB SF AI Collective 3154 17th St, San Francisco, California, USA 🤝 Go solo or team up, it's your flow. 🏆 Compete for a $15,000+ Prize Pool. 📍 Please note: If approved for the on-site experience, you’ll also have the opportunity to showcase your project live. Travel and accommodation will not be covered. 🧑🏻‍💻 Secure your spot now – sign up before the Kick-Off Stream!

Join our $1,000,000+ startup challenge series powered by Surge 📌 This announcement outlines the launch of a Global Human+AI Exchange — aligning universities, global cities, talent networks, and industry to accelerate human-centered AI innovation, technology transfer, and economic growth. 👉 Read more here ⏱️ 8 days to turn your idea, or existing product, into an investable demo. 📅 February 6 - 15, 2026 • Feb 6 - 14 (Online Phase) - Collaborate and build online with developers and AI innovators from around the world. All projects must be submitted by the end of the online phase on February 14th. 🕙 Doors open at 10:00 AM, first come, first served. • Feb 14 (On‑site Build Day) - Selected participants will be invited to an exclusive in‑person session to refine their projects and connect directly with mentors. • Feb 15 (On‑site Demos & Awards) - Live pitching sessions to a panel of judges and ecosystem partners, followed by the official winner announcement. 🌟 Get feedback from startup mentors and technical experts. 📍 On-site Venue (Feb 14–15): MindsDB SF AI Collective 3154 17th St, San Francisco, California, USA 📲 Real-time on-site updates (SF) For real-time announcements and information during the on-site portion (Feb 14–15), join the LabLab SF Chapter WhatsApp group: 👉 Join the WhatsApp group 🤝 Join solo or with a team. New founders and existing startups are welcome. 🏆 $1,000,000+ in credits, token prizes, perks and funding opportunity. 📍 On-site participation is by invitation only. Travel and accommodation expenses will not be covered. 🧑‍💻 Apply now to build, validate, and pitch with purpose.