The challenge

Have you thought about adding artificial intelligence to your project? It’s easier than you think, and NVIDIA is making AI fully accessible to makers, self-taught developers, and embedded technology enthusiasts by providing the tools and inspiration to get up and running fast.

In this contest, you’ll tap into the power of the new NVIDIA® Jetson Nano™ - a powerful, easy-to-use, mini AI computer that lets you run multiple neural networks in parallel. It’s perfect for any project using image classification, object detection, segmentation, speech processing, and more.

Use the Jetson Nano Developer Kit and all of your ingenuity to create an exciting new application or solution that falls into one of these three categories:

1.) Autonomous Machines & Robotics

2.) Intelligent Video Analytics & Smart Cities

3.) Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT)

NVIDIA is giving away thousands in prizes including a paid trip to NVIDIA GTC 2020, a brand new Titan RTX, a Jetson AGX Xavier Developer Kit, and Public Cloud Compute credits that you can use for your next project. Plus we will be dropping in special prizes like NVIDIA Shield and free access to courses from NVIDIA’s world class online Deep Learning Institute (DLI).

In addition, one project will be selected for the special “AI Social Impact Award” that recognizes a solution which leverages the power of artificial intelligence to have a clear and positive impact on people’s lives and/or the environment around us.

See more details about the categories, the Social Impact Award, and the prizes below.

Get Started

There are just three simple steps and you’re off to the races.

1. GET AI - Get an NVIDIA Jetson Nano Developer Kit with everything you need to get up and running fast. Buy one from our partner Seeed Studio here. We will send you a $5.00 discount code by email after you register for the competition.

2. LEARN AI - If you’re new to AI, you can take our free, self-paced Deep Learning Institute (DLI) course online. You’ll learn to collect image data and use it to train, optimize, and deploy AI models for custom tasks like recognizing hand gestures, image regression for locating a key point in an image, and much more. Sign up here. (Note: the DLI course isn’t mandatory, but you’ll find it useful)

3. BUILD AI - Armed with a Jetson Nano and your newfound skills from our free DLI course, you’ll be ready to see where AI can take your creativity for this contest. Need inspiration? Check out the projects from our Developer and Partner Communities.

Learn more about the NVIDIA Jetson Nano by watching our webinar here.



The Categories

We realize that your submission may technically fall into more than one of the categories below, but select the one that you believe is most applicable. The submission team will review all applications and contact you directly if we believe that your solution should apply to a different category.

1.) Autonomous Machines & Robotics

2.) Intelligent Video Analytics (IVA) & Smart Cities

3.) Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT)

Category 1: Autonomous Machines & Robotics

AI enables autonomous machines to perceive, navigate, and manipulate the world around them in applications like delivery, maintenance, and language learning. Use your NVIDIA Jetson Nano to develop and deploy an AI-powered robot, drone, or other autonomous machine.

The machine must be able to gain information about its environment, work for an extended period without human intervention, move either all or part of itself through its operating environment, and avoid situations that are harmful to people, property, and itself.

You can leverage the NVIDIA Isaac platform which is designed to help you accelerate robot development, simulation, and deployment. Download the Isaac SDK for a comprehensive set of robotics algorithm and software tools. Leverage Isaac SIM to train and test your robot using highly realistic virtual simulation environments.

Category 2: Intelligent Video Analytics (IVA) & Smart Cities

Data is the lifeblood of the modern city. Today, it’s being captured by more than 500 million sensors worldwide, and that number is growing exponentially. Video represents one of the richest sensors used, generating massive streams of data that need analysis.

AI is the key to turning this information into insight. It’s transforming how we capture, inspect, and analyze data to impact everything from traffic and parking management to city services.

Using your Jetson Nano, combined with the NVIDIA DeepStream SDK for high-performance video analytics, develop a solution that could have a demonstrated impact on enhancing smart city infrastructure.

You can also leverage NVIDIA's Transfer Learning Toolkit (TLT) to eliminate the time-consuming process of building and fine-tuning Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) from scratch for Intelligent Video Analytics applications.

Category 3: Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT)

AIoT is the merging of Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things, bringing intelligence to a variety of edge devices. AIoT pushes the computing, analysis, and decision making to the location where it’s most effective while helping to address situations where latency or bandwidth are an issue.

Smart homes and buildings represent a huge opportunity for AIoT applications where intelligence can be brought to everything from appliances, entertainment systems, locks, alarms, heating / cooling systems, power management, and more.

Use your Jetson Nano Developer Kit to build an AIoT solution that uses the power of AI to enable local processing of data at the edge.

AI Social Impact Award

AI has the potential to be a tremendous force for good in the world, helping to solve some of the toughest challenges facing global societies and benefiting both humanity and the environment. Already, AI is making strides in areas such as medicine, energy efficiency, clean water, transportation safety, agriculture, and more.

The AI Social Impact Award will be given to one project among the three categories which clearly demonstrates that it is using Artificial Intelligence to have a positive, long-term impact to people’s lives and the environment around us.

The winner of the AI Social Impact award will receive a trip to NVIDIA GTC 2020, a brand new NVIDIA Titan RTX, an NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier Developer Kit, and $1000 in Public Cloud Compute Credits.

The Software

NVIDIA JetPack SDK

The NVIDIA JetPack SDK is the most comprehensive solution for building AI applications. Jetson Nano is supported by the JetPack SDK, which includes the board support package (BSP), Linux operating system, NVIDIA CUDA®, and compatibility with third-party platforms.

Use NVIDIA SDK Manager to flash your Jetson developer kit with the latest OS image, install developer tools for both host computer and developer kit, and install the libraries and APIs, samples, and documentation needed to jumpstart your development environment.

NVIDIA DeepStream SDK

The NVIDIA DeepStream SDK delivers a complete streaming analytics toolkit for AI-based video and image understanding, as well as multi-sensor processing. The DeepStream application framework features hardware-accelerated building blocks, called plug-ins, that bring deep neural networks and other complex processing tasks into a stream processing pipeline.

DeepStream enables real-time understanding of video and sensor data that is rich and multi-modal. It’s ideal for applications like retail analytics, intelligent traffic control, automated optical inspection, freight and goods tracking, and more.

NVIDIA Isaac SDK

NVIDIA Isaac Software Development Kit (SDK) is a developer toolbox for accelerating the development and deployment of AI-powered robots. The SDK includes the Isaac Robot Engine, packages with high-performance robotics algorithms, hardware reference applications and powerful simulation platform, Isaac Sim.

Isaac Sim is a virtual robotics laboratory and a high-fidelity 3D world simulator. It accelerates research, design, and development in robotics by reducing cost and risk. Developers can quickly and easily train and test their robots in detailed, highly realistic scenarios.