AI Innovation Challenge

The challenge

Artificial Intelligence has become ubiquitous: from personal devices and assistants to self-driving cars and healthcare diagnostics, AI is driving our world to be more efficient and provides innovative solutions across a wide variety of domains.

SparkFun (with support from NVIDIA) invites the Hackster community to build innovative AI applications using the NVIDIA® Jetson™. There are three categories to choose from: Generative AI Applications, Generative AI Models for the Edge, and AI at the Edge Applications (Open Category).

For all three categories, your project must use the NVIDIA Jetson platform to run any computation or algorithms.

• For the Generative AI Applications and Generative AI Models categories, you must use NVIDIA Jetson Orin.
• For the AI at the Edge Applications (Open Category), you may use any NVIDIA Jetson product.

By participating in this contest, you can showcase your creativity and innovation by leveraging the capabilities of Jetson. Join us in pushing the boundaries of AI and helping to shape the future of artificial intelligence.

Submit your project concept on "Apply for Hardware" by Dec. 11 for the opportunity to win a free NVIDIA Jetson Orin Developer Kit to help bring your idea to life. We will choose 10 winners to receive a free kit and announce them on Dec. 15.

SparkFun is also running a contest special and offering $100.00 off the powerful Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit to all participants who sign up for the contest. (You will automatically receive the coupon code in your registration confirmation email)

(Note: SparkFun is not responsible for customs fees associated with the shipment of the product. If you live in a country where customs fees are generally high, we recommend purchasing this kit from one of NVIDIA's other regional distributors. Click here for more details.)

The Categories

Category 1: Generative AI Applications for the Edge

Generative AI has a profound impact on every industry and moving machine by bringing contextual awareness, robust performance, natural language interaction and beyond. The new Jetson Generative AI Lab is a centralized hub for discovering cutting-edge generative AI models, as well as learning how to deploy them seamlessly on Jetson devices. At the core of this initiative is Machine Learning Containers for Jetson and JetPack, an open-source repository meticulously crafted to facilitate the creation of containers specifically tailored for Jetson Orin devices.

In this category, we invite you to create a real-world generative AI application that runs on the NVIDIA Jetson Orin platform. You can either leverage the existing models available in the Jetson Generative AI Lab or take open-source models to build a useful application using Jetson's onboard computer. Your project must use deep learning, machine learning, and/or computer vision in a meaningful way, and demonstrate a fundamental understanding of creating applications with Generative AI. Your project will be evaluated on the effectiveness, technical complexity, and performance of your AI solution on Jetson.

Whether it's a robot, chatbot, or vision AI solution, the possibilities are endless. This is your chance to unleash your creativity and demonstrate the true potential of generative AI on NVIDIA Jetson Orin.

Note: Any models or datasets used by your generative AI application must be publicly available and run locally on Jetson.

Category 2: Generative AI Models for the Edge

Generative AI is a branch of artificial intelligence that focuses on creating models and systems capable of generating new and original content. These models are trained on large diverse datasets and can generate sophisticated outputs such as images, text, or even entire scenarios that resemble human-created content. For this category, please optimize or quantize a pre-trained Generative AI model for deployment to the edge, or fine-tune/LoRA your own foundational model that is capable of running on the NVIDIA Jetson Orin platform and achieving interactive performance for potential edge AI use cases.

To get you started, NVIDIA recently launched the Jetson Generative AI Lab, allowing developers to explore the possibilities of generative AI in real-world scenarios using Jetson Orin edge devices. In the Gen AI Lab, we show how to deploy sample large language models (LLMs), vision transformers, and stable diffusion models which can run on the Jetson device locally. Many of these have reduced-precision quantization applied to reduce memory usage, in addition to using optimized inferencing APIs and CUDA kernels for improving their performance. Apply similar optimization strategies on exciting new models to bring them to edge devices, and your model may have the opportunity to be featured in the Jetson Generative AI Lab.

Note: Any models or datasets used must be publicly available and run locally on Jetson.

Category 3: AI at the Edge Applications (Open Category):

This is an open category for you to create any AI-based application from robotics to vision AI solutions. You do not need to include a Generative AI component in this category. While the use of an NVIDIA Jetson Developer Kit is required, it does not have to be an NVIDIA Jetson Orin, although any computation must be performed onboard.

We have many interesting applications coming from Jetson community projects, ranging from fruit quality control, people flow analysis systems, weed control robots, autonomous wheelchairs, mini autonomous race cars, and more. We love seeing all of the creative ideas from Jetson developers.

Getting started with the hardware

In this contest, you will tap into the power of the NVIDIA Jetson platform - which provides the tools to develop and deploy AI-powered robots, IVA applications, and other autonomous machines.

For the Generative AI categories, you will need to use Jetson Orin Developer Kits.

Learn more about how to get started with the Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit in our video here and our getting started guide.

For the open category, you are eligible to use any Jetson Developer Kit, get details here.

Prizes

Generative AI Applications

1st Place

Generative AI Applications for the Edge 1st Place

-

$13,000 value

✨ One NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin Developer Kit
🖥 One NVIDIA A6000 GPU
🎁 One $500 Sparkfun Giftcard
🧑‍🏫 Free NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute Course Package
🎫 One Free Complete Pass to NVIDIA GTC in Spring 2025 (does not include travel to the event)
📷 One StereoLabs Zed-X AI Camera for Robotics

2nd Place

Generative AI Applications for the Edge 2nd Place

-

$5,000 value

✨ One Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit
💻 One NVIDIA-powered Laptop
🎁 One $300 Sparkfun Giftcard
🧑‍🏫 Free NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute Course Package
📷 One StereoLabs Zed-Mini AI Camera

3rd Place

Generative AI Applications for the Edge 3rd Place

-

$2,000 value

✨ One Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit
🎁 $150 Sparkfun Giftcard
🧑‍🏫 Free NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute Course Package

Generative AI Models for the Edge

1st Place

Generative AI Models for the Edge 1st Place

-

$13,000 value

✨ One NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin Developer Kit
🖥 One NVIDIA A6000 GPU
🎁 One $500 Sparkfun Giftcard
🧑‍🏫 Free NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute Course Package
🎫 One Free Complete Pass to NVIDIA GTC in Spring 2025 (does not include travel to the event)
📷 One StereoLabs Zed-X AI Camera for Robotics

2nd Place

Generative AI Models for the Edge 2nd Place

-

$5,000 value

✨ One Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit
💻 One NVIDIA-powered Laptop
🎁 One $300 Sparkfun Giftcard
🧑‍🏫 Free NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute Course Package
📷 One StereoLabs Zed-Mini AI Camera

3rd Place

Generative AI Models for the Edge 3rd Place

-

$2,000 value

✨ One Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit
🎁 $150 Sparkfun Giftcard
🧑‍🏫 Free NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute Course Package

AI at the Edge Applications (Open Category)

1st Place

AI at the Edge Applications (Open Category) 1st Place

-

$13,000 value

✨ One NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin Developer Kit
🖥 One NVIDIA A6000 GPU
🎁 One $500 Sparkfun Giftcard
🧑‍🏫 Free NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute Course Package
🎫 One Free Complete Pass to NVIDIA GTC in Spring 2025 (does not include travel to the event)
📷 One StereoLabs Zed-X AI Camera for Robotics

2nd Place

AI at the Edge Applications (Open Category) 2nd Place

-

$5,000 value

✨ One Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit
💻 One NVIDIA-powered Laptop
🎁 One $300 Sparkfun Giftcard
🧑‍🏫 Free NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute Course Package
📷 One StereoLabs Zed-Mini AI Camera

3rd Place

AI at the Edge Applications (Open Category) 3rd Place

-

$2,000 value

✨ One Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit
🎁 $150 Sparkfun Giftcard
🧑‍🏫 Free NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute Course Package

Judges

Resources

Watch this video from Dustin Franklin, Principle Engineer at NVIDIA on Bringing Generative AI to Life with NVIDIA Jetson

Get inspired by other community projects:

NVIDIA Jetson has a 1 million strong developer community that actively creates amazing projects every single day in a broad range of categories: from robotic arms to smart drones to healthcare applications to robots that help around the home - NVIDIA Jetson has inspired a myriad of cool solutions. Check out NVIDIA's Hackster Platform Hub or Jetson Community Projects page which provides details on many of the great projects developers have created using NVIDIA Jetson.

Also check out the new Jetson Generative AI Lab on Github where you can see tutorials on everything from running an LLM-based chat bot on Jetson to vision language models to image generation and more.

Here are some other helpful links for you to get started with your submission using the NVIDIA Jetson Developer Kits:

• All NVIDIA Jetson Developer Kit Resources and Documentation
• Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit Getting Started Guide
• Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit User Guide
• Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit Carrier Board Specification
• Jetson AGX Orin Developer Kit Getting Started Guide
• Jetson AGX Orin Developer Kit User Guide
• Jetson AGX Orin Developer Kit Carrier Board Specification
• NVIDIA Jetson Tutorials
• Jetson Community Forums
• NVIDIA Pretrained AI Models
• Jetson Community Projects

You can learn more about the software available to support your project here:

• The NVIDIA JetPack SDK is the most comprehensive solution for building AI applications. NVIDIA Jetson is supported by the JetPack SDK, which includes the board support package (BSP), Linux operating system, NVIDIA CUDA®, and compatibility with third-party platforms.
• NVIDIA TAO simplifies the time-consuming parts of a deep learning workflow, from data preparation to training to optimization,. Speed up your development by 10X when you start with production-ready pre-trained AI models from the NVIDIA NGC™ catalog. These models have been trained to high accuracy for domains including computer vision, conversational AI, and more.
• NVIDIA Riva is a fully accelerated SDK for building multimodal conversational AI applications using an end-to-end deep learning pipeline. The Riva SDK includes pretrained conversational AI models, the NVIDIA TAO Toolkit, and optimized end-to-end skills for speech, vision, and natural language processing (NLP) tasks.
• NVIDIA DeepStream SDK delivers a complete streaming analytics toolkit for AI-based multi-sensor processing and video and image understanding on Jetson.
• NVIDIA Isaac ROS are hardware-accelerated packages that make it easier for ROS developers to build high-performance solutions on NVIDIA hardware.
• NVIDIA Isaac Sim, powered by Omniverse, is a scalable robotics simulation application.

Official technical support from NVIDIA engineers:

• Post your question on the Jetson forum here, select the product you're working with and NVIDIA moderators will get back to you quickly.

Join the contest discord:

Use the contest discord channel here to interact with other peers and for community technical support. We will be organizing future office hours with experts as the contest progresses.

About us

Since 2003, SparkFun has been helping turn ideas into reality – whether you’re creating a smart weather station, exploring the frontier of machine learning, building a robot for school or prototyping your first (or tenth) product. No matter your vision or skill level, our open-source components, resources, and online tutorials are designed to broaden access to innovative technology and make the road to a finished project shorter. From one guy mailing boxes out of a basement to 140 employees in an 80,000-square-foot building in Boulder, Colorado - read the story here.

NVIDIA pioneered a supercharged form of computing loved by the most demanding computer users in the world — scientists, designers, artists, and gamers. For them, we’ve built the equivalent of a time machine.

Fueled by the insatiable demand for better 3D graphics, and the massive scale of the gaming market, NVIDIA has evolved the GPU into a computer brain at the exciting intersection of virtual reality, high performance computing, and artificial intelligence.