Community Members!
In May we ran our first Robot Hackathon to put Monty through its paces in the real world. You can read about it here: https://thousandbrains.org/2025-05-robot-hackathon
Teams & Projects
Everything is Awesome (LEGO + Raspberry Pi platform)
Team: @tslominski @rmounir
Repo: GitHub - thousandbrainsproject/everything_is_awesome: May 2025 Hackathon LEGO robot fork
Built a LEGO robot with tower-mounted sensors that move vertically, capturing RGB + depth while Monty also controls a platform to rotate the object. Two Raspberry Pis orchestrated Monty’s movement and data collection in the world.
Read more about the setup here: https://thousandbrainsproject.readme.io/docs/using-monty-for-robotics#example-3-lego-based-robot
Ultrasound Perception (Butterfly Ultrasound)
Team: @vclay @nleadholm @brainwaves
Repo: https://github.com/thousandbrainsproject/ultrasound_perception
Thanks to Butterfly Network, we used the Butterfly iQ3 (handheld, iPad-connected) to explore ultrasound-guided perception. We attached an HTC Vive tracker to the ultrasound probe to let Monty know how its sensor is moving in the world and allow it to learn a structured representation of the scanned objects as well as recognize them.
Read more about the setup here: https://thousandbrainsproject.readme.io/docs/using-monty-for-robotics#example-2-ultrasound
Icarus (Drone)
Team: Scott Knudstrup, Hojae Lee, Jeremy Shoemaker
Used a DJI Tello (API-controllable, front camera) to sense scenes from the air.
And the Winner… 
Everything is Awesome (LEGO robot) took 1st place with an outstanding success rate. This also marked a major milestone for our project as it was the first time Monty actively moved it’s sensors in the real world!
Huge congrats to Ramy and Tristan. Their prize? A robot potted meat can 
Watch the Presentations 
You can watch all hackathon presentations here: 2025/05 - Robot Hackathon Presentations
And you can see a lessons-learned video with the research team here: https://youtu.be/cnBmDtv0Crc where we look at the ways that we can improve the platform for robotics in the future.
Everything is Awesome Repo - https://github.com/thousandbrainsproject/everything_is_awesome
Ultrasound Team - https://github.com/thousandbrainsproject/ultrasound_perception