Students at Duoc UC Puerto Montt, Chile, used Duckietown to solve a real salmon farming challenge during the 2026 edition of the Duckie Day.
DUOC UC Puerto Montt, Chile, July 2026: Duckie Day 2026 brought together students from six Duoc UC campuses at Puerto Montt for a robotics competition focused on one of Chile’s main industries: salmon farming.
Learning autonomous robotics through industry challenges
Hosted by the School of Computer Science and Telecommunications at Duoc UC Puerto Montt, Duckie Day 2026 brought together students from six Duoc UC campuses at Puerto Montt to tackle robotics challenges inspired by practical issues present in the aquaculture industry of Chile.
Aquaculture is a major economic activity in Chile. Among the diverse aquacultures practiced in the country, Atlantic salmon aquaculture is by far the largest sector. Chile is the second largest salmon and trout producer in the world after Norway.
Duckietown, the platform behind the technical learning
Working with the Duckietown platform, teams developed autonomous Duckiebots capable of navigating independently, detecting sea lice using embedded computer vision, issuing an alert, and autonomously returning to their starting point.
Along the way, participants applied core robotics concepts including camera calibration, lane following, AprilTag localization, PID control, and sim-to-real development on ROS-based robots powered Duckietown.
The main challenge centered on pathogen detection, a critical concern for the regional industry.
Luis Tamariz, a participating student, explained the details of the mission: “It was a competition where we had to program robots with cameras that drive autonomously. The main challenge was to go from point A to different points to complete the goal: detect sea lice, issue an alert, and return to the starting point.”
It was a competition where we had to program robots with cameras that
drive autonomously. The main challenge was to go from point A to
different points to complete the goal: detect sea lice, issue an alert,
and return to the starting point.
Carolina Martínez, Program Director of the School of Computer Science and Telecommunications, highlighted the scale of the gathering:
“We have six campuses participating, a wonderful experience for our students, for our faculty, and for the companies involved. We are proud that our students can use their knowledge of artificial intelligence to demonstrate their connection to the region; these are not just abstract ideas, but a real exercise rooted in the aquaculture industry.
The event was backed by key industry players such as MOWI Chile, who presented real challenges from their processing plants.
Nicolás Mihovilovic, MOWI’s Deputy Manager of Public Affairs, praised the level achieved: “We are very proud of this young talent. These students were able to solve real industry challenges, particularly from Mowi’s processing plant. It took weeks of hard work, planning, and programming.”
Learn more about Duckietown
Duckietown enables state-of-the-art robotics and AI learning experiences.
It is designed to help teach, learn, and do research: from exploring the fundamentals of computer science and automation to pushing the boundaries of human knowledge.
Learn more about the Rome Cup 2026, organized since 2007 by the Fondazione Mondo Digitale in Rome. Dedicated to students, businesses and institutions.
Rome, 28th April 2026 – Over 4000 students took part in the 19th edition of the Rome Cup 2026 entitled “What’s Next? – Intelligence and talent in dialogue, converging technologies and shared governance” was held in Rome from 28-30 April and organized by Fondazione Mondo Digitale in collaboration with the University of Rome “La Sapienza”.
The Rome Cup 2026 is a multi day event dedicated to robotics and innovation across three key areas – robotics, artificial intelligence and life sciences – and with a strategic vision: focusing on the younger generations.
Organized by Fondazione Mondo Digitale and the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, the event brings together schools, universities, research centers and companies to discuss about robotics, artificial intelligence and emerging technologies.
Now in its 19th year, the initiative features conferences, robotics competitions, workshops and career guidance sessions, with the aim of nurturing talent and skills to build a sustainable and inclusive future.
Since 2007, Rome Cup has been encouraging the younger generation to study scientific subjects and developing skills and professional profiles for the job market. Each edition introduces new “themes” (women in science, robotics spin-offs, Industry 4.0, life sciences, etc.) to forge connections and enrich the innovation ecosystem through vertical and cross-sector partnerships.
The event saw the participation of over 4000 students, involving 100 teams in the robotics competitions, 32 teams in creative contests, 11 universities, 17 university careers talks and an exhibition area featuring prototypes from 53 organizations.
The central theme of this edition was augmented intelligence as a paradigm for human-centered, inclusive and sustainable development of technological innovation and its application ecosystems.
Duckietown at the Rome Cup 2026
Duckietown, represented by Jacopo Tani, Ph.D., was part of a panel of judges tasked with assigning an award to the best project participating in the robotics creative contest. The “20°Trofeo Internazionale di robotica Città di Roma [20th International Robotics Trophy, City of Rome]” (Rescue Line, Explorer Junior, Explorer Senior, Robotic arms) took place as well.
Prototype robotic applications were presented (assistance, agriculture, etc.) in various categories: AgroBOT, CoBOT, DroneBOT, MareBOT, NonniBOT, TirBOT, and this year also a HealthBOT category.
Following a brief presentation session, the jury composed by Ezia Palmeri, senior official at the Ministry of Education and Merit; Fabrizio Corradi, psychotechnologist and expert in assistive technologies, augmentative and alternative communication, and artificial intelligence at LUMSA and the Leonarda Vaccari Institute; Alessia Lo Bosco, Director of Vocational Training Services for the Metropolitan City of Rome; Massimiliano Dibitonto, Head of Product and Services Guidelines at Olivetti and Jacopo Tani, co-founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Duckietown, selected the winners.
The winning teams from the 2026 edition:
MAREBOT – Thalassa Boat, IIS Marconi Pieralisi TIRBOT – Road Safety and AI, IIS De Santis NONNIBOT – Word Shield, IIS Giordano AGROBOT – Diet Bot, IIS Russell (Cles) COBOT – Aura, IIS Avogadro RobotCT – IIS Vaccarini (Catani
Photo credits: Francesco Vignali
Learn more about Duckietown
Duckietown is a set of tools that enables hands-on robotics and AI learning experiences.
It is designed to help teach, learn, and do research: from exploring the fundamentals of computer science and automation to pushing the boundaries of human knowledge.
Tor Vergata University and Duckietown deliver hands-on control systems workshop at EU Maker Faire Rome 2025
Tor Vergata University, Rome, Italy, delivered a hands-on educational workshop on control systems at the European Maker Faire 2025 that took place in Rome, Oct. 17-19, 2025, in partnership with Duckietown.
Hands-on workshop: Introduction to automatic control with self-driving cars
Tor Vergata University, Rome’s second University, in partnership with Duckietown, has delivered a workshop titled “Introduction to Automatic Control with Self-Driving Duckiebots” in occasion of the EU Maker Faire in Rome, which hosted nearly 50000 visitors over the span of three days.
The objective of the workshop was to introduce participants to the fundamental principles of control system engineering and vehicle autonomy, by using real and simulated Duckiebots, and investigating the real-world impact of “details” such as controller tuning.
In this workshop, tuned for makers, educators, and learners, participants have:
Learnt what a robot is and what all robots have in common;
Understood the role of feedback and control systems in vehicle autonomy, as well as other everyday technologies;
Explored sensors, actuators, and the perception pipeline of Duckiebots;
Tuned a PID controller on simulated and physical Duckiebots.
Learning automatic control: Who, where and when
The workshop, led by Professor Mario Sassano from the Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile e Informatica of the Tor Vergata University, took place in three sessions at the European Maker Faire 2025 in Rome. Shima Akbari, Giorgio Manca and Davide Iafrate provided precious assistance:
Friday, October 17, 2025: from 13:00 to 14:30 CET, Room 2 Make Lab (Area A)
Saturday, October 18, 2025: from 12.30 to 14:00 CET, Room 2 Make Lab (Area A)
Sunday, October 19, 2025: form 13:00 to 16:00, Room 8 (Area J)
Duckietown is a platform for creating and disseminating robotics and AI learning experiences.
It is modular, customizable and state-of-the-art, and designed to teach, learn, and do research. From exploring the fundamentals of computer science and automation to pushing the boundaries of knowledge, Duckietown evolves with the skills of the user.
Duckietown at the European Maker Faire 2025 – Rome
Duckietown went to the European Maker Faire 2025 in Rome, a place where makers, innovators, and creatives from all over the world showcase
projects in electronics, artificial intelligence, robotics, virtual and
augmented reality, gaming, music, art, education, and much more.
Maker Faire Rome – The European Edition is an annual event, open to visitors, dedicated to innovation, technology, and creativity. It brings together innovators, makers, and enthusiasts from all over Europe. In addition to showcasing projects and inventions, it offers workshops, conferences, and labs to acquire technical skills and stimulate collaboration.
It attracts students, startups, companies, and government entities, fostering idea exchange and technological evolution. It has become a reference point for the European innovators community, highlighting Italy as a center of innovation and creativity.
Duckietown went to Rome from the 17th to the 19th of October, to showcase our robots, meet enthusiasts and other exhibitors, and talk about robotics and robot autonomy. And what a ride it has been! Here below are some photos we took at the event.
Duckietown is a platform for creating and disseminating robotics and AI learning experiences.
It is modular, customizable and state-of-the-art, and designed to teach, learn, and do research. From exploring the fundamentals of computer science and automation to pushing the boundaries of knowledge, Duckietown evolves with the skills of the user.
High school learners gathered at MassRobotics in Boston to learn about drone autonomy using the latest Duckiedrones, model DD24.
With the support of Brown University and Amazon Robotics, learners deep-dived for a week in the science and technology of autonomous flight.
Starting from a box of parts, the Duckietown DD24 drone and accompanying pedagogical materials enable a rich set of learning experiences for newcomers to autonomy, as well as for seasoned veterans.
Learners had the opportunity to practice soldering, electrical connections testing, software initialization for development and operations, actuator setup, sensor calibrations, low-level controller tuning, manual flight, and autonomous hovering.
This summer academy followed a similar experience at Howard University, Washington DC, that took place in June 2024.
The Duckiedrone is a DIY, Raspberry Pi-based drone designed to introduce learners to autonomous flight.
The Duckietown platform enables state-of-the-art robotics and AI learning experiences.
It is designed to help teach, learn, and do research: from exploring the fundamentals of computer science and automation to pushing the boundaries of human knowledge.
Cambridge, MA, USA – McGovern Institute, 24-25 February 2024: Over 100 participants took part to the first MIT BCI hackathon, competing in teams to control Duckiebots using brain computer interfaces.
Controlling Duckiebots using brain computer interfaces
Over 100 participants gathered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the first BCI hackathon organized by Dr. Federico Claudi. The participants tried to control a Duckiebot using only brain computer interfaces, and competed in a series of tasks.
BCI is the field of research that studies how to measure, amplify, filter and utilize electrical signals from the brain to interact with external devices.
What made this hackathon distinctive was the hands-on challenge, where participants were tasked with controlling a physical robot. This not only tested participants’ technical skills but also showcased their ability to tackle real-world problems through innovative BCI applications.
The task teams competed on was having Duckiebots (DB21-J4) navigate a road loop as fast as possible while avoiding Duckies. Here is an example:
The hardware used in this competition was an X.on EEG headset, and Duckiebots for control. Also, the winning team’s solution will be soon made available as a reproducible Learning Experience with Duckietown – stay tuned!
The Duckiebot is a DIY, Raspberry Pi-based robot powered by Nvidia and designed for introducing learners to autonomous technologies.
If you would like to contribute in developing accessible BCI LXs with Duckietown, and support the dissemination of BCI research, e.g. reach out to us at [email protected].
Learn more about Duckietown
The Duckietown platform enables state-of-the-art robotics and AI learning experiences.
It is designed to help teach, learn, and do research: from exploring the fundamentals of computer science and automation to pushing the boundaries of human knowledge.
Boston, 20 October 2023: Duckietown Sky and the Duckietown drone, a Raspberry Pi-based autonomous quadcopter, are discussed with the Aerial ROS community, a group of experts working to define the future of software architectures for quadcopters.
Learning robot autonomy by flying with Duckietown Sky
Following an invitation to the Aerial ROS workgroup community meeting, Duckietown staff was delighted to present the Duckietown Sky initiative, the current Duckiedrone design, a DIY Raspberry Pi-based autonomous quadcopter, and future plans for both hardware and courseware development.
The goal of the ROS (Robotic Operating System) aerial robotics working group is to gather drone enthusiasts within the ROS community and facilitate the sharing of ideas and discussion of issues regarding autonomous robotic platforms operating in the air.
Duckietown Sky, a National Science Foundation-funded educational effort in collaboration with Brown University started in 2019, is an integral component of the Duckietown education vision, representing the commitment to fostering robot autonomy education in all its forms. Beyond self-driving cars (Duckiebots) and smart cities (Duckietowns), Duckietown highlights what is common despite the different applications of robot autonomy. From ground to sky, whether it drives, flies, or blinks, Duckietown is a platform to learn, explore and innovate when it comes to robot autonomy.
With the focus on quadcopters, Duckietown Sky offers MOOC-style learning experiences tailored for undergraduate and senior high school students. Flight is exciting!
The program’s design criteria revolves around achieving state-of-the-art autonomy ground-up using off-the-shelf components, with a Raspberry Pi as core computational unit, for its wide-spread applications and large community. Duckiedrones, now at the second hardware design iteration moving towards the third, aim to provide students with hands-on learning experiences covering from the basics, such as soldering, to pretty advanced algorithmic cornerstones of autonomy such an UKFs (Unscented Kalman Filters) and SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping).
Aspiring engineers should however be prepared for preliminary requirements like soldering, have access to a laptop or base station, and an internet connection for setting the working environment up.
From a box of parts to a Raspberry Pi-based autonomous quadcopter
The Duckietown Sky experience is an exciting journey that begins with a simple box of parts and culminates in the creation of an autonomously flying drone. In the Duckietown spirit of democratizing access to the science and technology of autonomy through accessible platforms, the happy-yellow Duckiebox includes almost everything needed to get flying.
We encourage instructors, students and practitioners to check the development roadmaps for both our hardware design and courseware, outlined in our presentation, and reaching out without hesitation to provide comments or feedback!
Building on the extensive experience of the Duckietown team in massive open online courses (check out the Self-Driving Cars with Duckietown MOOC: the world’s first robot autonomy MOOC with hardware), we look to prepare a series of short online courses. These courses will be led by Professors from Brown, as well as other universities, and will provide an ever broader audience with the opportunity to explore the fascinating world of robot autonomy: from the science and technology to the tools and workflows, to real-world applications presented by industry and academic leaders.
Want to try the Duckietown Sky experience yourself, build a DYI Raspberry Pi-based autonomous quadcopter, or teach an aerial autonomy class at your high school or at university level? Follow the steps below to begin now.
Duckietown enables state-of-the-art robotics and AI learning experiences. It is designed to help teach, learn, and do research: from exploring the fundamentals of computer science and automation to pushing the boundaries of human knowledge.
Boston, 7-11 July 2023: Congratulations to the fourth cohort of students of the Duckiedrone summer academy, hosted by Massrobotics, Brown University and Duckietown with the generous support of Amazon Robotics!
Exploring the skies at the summer Duckiedrone academy
As the sun shines high, the summer Duckiedrone academy, a program which sees the cooperation of Duckietown, Amazon Fulfillment Technology and Robotics, MassRobotics and Brown University, has attracted high school students from the greater Boston area to dive into the world of autonomous aerial vehicles.
The Duckiedrone is a DIY, open, Raspberry Pi-based quadcopter kit designed for introducing learners to autonomous flight. Comes with a polished undergraduate-level course and the support of the Duckietown international community.
Students learned how to build, program, and fly a drone starting from a box of components, in addition to participating in workshops held by industry professionals such as Stephanie Tellex, Associate Professor of Computer Science at Brown University, and Andrea Francesco Daniele, Chief Technology Officer at Duckietown.
In recent years autonomous robots have started revolutionizing many industries, and drones are playing an important role in this ongoing trend with applications from agriculture to inspection, surveillance, and warehouse management.
These versatile flying machines are a gateway to the fundamentals of robot autonomy, especially (but not only!) for younger learners. Seeing a machine fly on its own is exciting!
The Duckiedrone comes with step-by-step instructions for assembly, calibration, manual and autonomous operations. Students learn from the basics of mechatronics, such as soldering and handling of electrical circuits, to elements of autonomy including sensor calibration, middlewares (ROS), PID control, online filtering and simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) using Python and interactive Jupyter notebooks.
Learn more about Duckietown
The Duckietown platform enables state-of-the-art robotics and AI learning experiences.
It is designed to help teach, learn, and do research: from exploring the fundamentals of computer science and automation to pushing the boundaries of human knowledge.
This year’s embodied urban league challenges were lane following (LF), lane following with vehicles (LFV) and lane following with intersections,(LFI).
To account for differences between the real world and simulation, this edition finalists can make one additional submission to the real challenges to improve their scores.
Finalists are the authors of AI-DO 2021 submissions in the top 5 ranks for each challenge.
This year’s finalists are:
LF
András Kalapos
Bence Haromi
Sampsa Ranta
ETU-JBR Team
Giulio Vaccari
LFV
Sampsa Ranta
Adrian Brucker
Andras Beres
David Bardos
LFI
András Kalapos
Sampsa Ranta
Adrian Brucker
Andras Beres
The deadline for submitting the “final” submissions is Dec. 9th, 2 pm CET. All submissions received after this time will count towards the next edition of AI-DO.
Don’t forget to join the #aido channel on the Duckietown Slack for updates!
Compete in the 2021 edition of the Artificial Intelligence Driving Olympics (AI-DO 6)!
The AI-DO serves to benchmark the state of the art of artificial intelligence in autonomous driving by providing standardized simulation and hardware environments for tasks related to multi-sensory perception and embodied AI.
Duckietown traditionally hosts AI-DO competitions biannually, with finals events held at machine learning and robotics conferences such as the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) and the Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS).
AI-DO 6 will be in conjunction with NeurIPS 2021 and have three leagues: urban driving, advanced perception, and racing. The winter champions will be announced during NeurIPS 2021, on December 10, 2021!
The urban driving league uses the Duckietown platform and presents several challenges, each of increasing complexity.
The goal in each challenge is to develop a robotic agent for driving Duckiebots “well”. Baseline implementations are provided to test different approaches. There are no constraints on how your agents are designed.
Each challenge adds a layer of complexity: intersections, other vehicles, pedestrians, etc. You can check out the existing challenges on the Duckietown challenges server.
AI-DO 2021 features four challenges: lane following (LF), lane following with intersections (LFI), lane following with vehicles (LFV) and lane following with vehicles and intersections, multi-body, with full information (LFVI-multi-full).
All challenges have a simulation and hardware component (,), except for LFVI-multi-full, which is simulation () only.
The first phase (until Nov. 7) is a practice one. Results do not count towards leaderboards.
The second phase (Nov. 8-30) is the live competition and results count towards official leaderboards.
Selected submissions (that perform well enough in simulation) will be evaluated on hardware in Autolabs. The submissions scoring best in Autolabs will access the finals.
During the finals (Dec. 1-8) one additional submission is possible for each finalist, per challenge.
Winners (top 3) of the resulting leaderboard will be declared AI-DO 2021 winter champions and celebrated live during NeurIPS 2021. We require champions to submit a short video (2 mins) introducing themselves and describing their submission.
Winners are invited to join (not mandatory) the NeurIPS event, on December 10th, 2021,starting at 11.25 GMT (Zoom link will follow).
Overview
🎯
Goal: develop robotic agents for challenges of increasing complexity
Competition: best in sim are evaluated on hardware in Autolabs
Finals: one additional submission for Autolabs
Winners: 2 mins video submission description for NeurIPS 2021 event.
The challenges
Lane following
LF – The most traditional of AI-DO challenges: have a Duckiebot navigate a road loop without intersection, pedestrians (duckies) nor other vehicles. The objective is to travel the longest path in a given time while staying in the lane, i.e., not committing driving infractions.
LFI – This challenge builds upon LF by increasing the complexity of the road network, now featuring 3 and/or 4-way intersections, defined according to the Duckietown appearance specifications. Traffic lights will not be present on the map. The objective is to drive the longest distance while not breaking the rules of the road, now more complex due to the presence of traffic signs.
LFV – In this traditional AI-DO challenge, contestants seek to travel the longest path in a city without intersections nor pedestrians, but with other vehicles on the road. Non-playing vehicles (i.e., not running the user’s submitted agent) can be in the same and/or opposite lanes and have variable speed.
Lane following with vehicles and intersections (stateful)
LFVI-multi-full – this debuting challenge brings together roads with intersections and other vehicles. The submitted agent is deployed on all Duckiebots on the map (-multi), and is provided with full information, i.e., the state of the other vehicles on the map (-full). This challenge is in simulation only.
All you need to get started and participate in the AI-DO is a computer, a good internet connection, and the ambition to challenge your skills against the international community!
We provide webinars, operation manuals, and baselines to get started.