DUM-E
Voice-commanded robotic arm that sees its workspace and acts on natural-language instructions.
Read reference →
student major league
Hack the North 2025
Organized by Hack the North (student-run, University of Waterloo).
- Dates
- 12–14 Sep 2025
- Format
- in person
- Where
- University of Waterloo, E5/E6/E7 · Waterloo
- Participants
- 872
- Results
- partial
How it is judged
| Criterion | Lens | What judges look for |
|---|---|---|
| WOW factor | wow factor | Stands out and leaves a lasting impression; achieves its goal exceptionally in any dimension. |
| Technical ability | technical depth | Technical depth and advanced knowledge rated favorably. |
| Originality | originality | New problem, new approach, or something unique even if it solves no problem. |
| Design | design ux | User-friendly, intuitive and engaging for its audience. |
Judges. 31 judges: founders/CEOs of startups, CTOs and heads of engineering/product, two Y Combinator partners/staff, VC partners, a design leader, a robotics VP and an online personality. Heavy founder/builder weighting.
WOW factor is listed first in both the main rubric and several sponsor rubrics (Cohere, Warp).
Prizes and lanes
| Prize | Reward | Criteria |
|---|---|---|
| Hack the North 2025: Finalists | Finalist round | |
| Cohere | 1st $500/member + $4,000 credits; 2nd $100/member + $2,000 credits; 3rd $1,000 credits |
|
| Warp: Best Developer Tool | Keyboards per member |
|
| Y Combinator: Unicorn Prize | $2,000 + guaranteed YC interview |
|
| Graphite: Engineering Dream Team | AirPods per member |
|
| Messy real-world data agents (sponsor) Agents that act on unstructured, conflicting, noisy data. | $10K / $2K |
|
| Cua: Best State-of-the-Art Computer-Use Agent Scored on an OSWorld-Verified benchmark rather than by a panel. | Guaranteed YC partner interview | |
| Cerebras: Best Use of Cerebras | Keyboards per member |
|
| CSE: Network Traffic Exploration | — | |
| Solana: Best Consumer Payment Experience | Grants |
|
Known results
ROSS - Remote Operated Semantic Sketching
A robot that draws paintings onto a blind person's palm with warm and cold brushes, with narration.
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Source links
S-KBD67
A Nerf blaster rebuilt as a first-person-shooter controller.
Read reference →
Source links
SpeakEasy
Behavioral-interview practice that scores what you say and how you say it from video.
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Source links
Submissions and base rates
partial roster. 4 indexed. These counts describe what CrafterWIKI indexed, not what the event produced — do not read them as base rates.
| Project | Placement | Track | Domains |
|---|---|---|---|
| DUM-E Voice-commanded robotic arm that sees its workspace and acts on natural-language instructions. | Finalist | — |
|
| ROSS - Remote Operated Semantic Sketching A robot that draws paintings onto a blind person's palm with warm and cold brushes, with narration. | Finalist | — |
|
| S-KBD67 A Nerf blaster rebuilt as a first-person-shooter controller. | Finalist | — |
|
| SpeakEasy Behavioral-interview practice that scores what you say and how you say it from video. | Finalist | — |
|
Priors from other student major league events
Mechanisms and lenses among 2 confirmed winners from 1 other event of this kind.
Mechanisms
Judging lenses
Curator note. Only 4 of the 12 finalists verified on project pages so far. Gallery lists 24 projects on page 1; per-prize winners not yet mapped.
Use this brief
crafterwiki event hack-the-north-2025
Sources
- https://hackthenorth2025.devpost.com/ — Dates, participants, prizes, judges, judging criteria.
- https://hackthenorth2025.devpost.com/project-gallery
- https://hackthenorth.com/ — 2026 site features S-KBD67, ROSS and DUM-E as past projects.