KARACHI: Pakistani robotics data company World Context hosted its first-ever robotics hackathon at the University of California, Berkeley, bringing together 13 teams as part of its efforts to expand artificial intelligence and technology trade between Pakistan and the United States.
The hackathon, held in partnership with Blockchain at Berkeley, was sponsored by Google Gemini, ElevenLabs, The Hackathon Company, Lovable, Praxis Robotics and UC Berkeley Startup. Participants used datasets provided by World Context to develop projects across hardware, software and visualization tracks.
Sortbot, a project focused on building robots capable of sorting different types of objects, won the hardware track. Reconstructors, which focused on reconstructing World Context data in the physical world, won the software track. Reconstructors also produced a simulation that won the visualization track.
The event awarded a total of USD4,500 (Rs1.25 million) in cash prizes.
The hackathon highlighted the growing importance of human demonstration data in robotics. By recording how people perform tasks in real-world environments, this type of data can give developers examples of how physical tasks are carried out, and help them build and train systems designed to operate in the physical world.
World Context Founder and Chief Executive Officer Sherdil Ali Khan said the quality of the submissions was one of the biggest surprises of the event and that the company plans to work with universities to organize similar events in the future.
“The talent on display at Berkeley showed how advanced the industry is in the U.S., and that there are tremendous opportunities to learn from and partner with U.S. institutions and companies,” Khan said. “We can bring these learning back to Pakistan to improve the state of technology there as well.”
Khan added that the creativity and technical ability demonstrated by participants highlighted the potential of human demonstration data in robotics, with students using World Context datasets in ways that were not anticipated by the company.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026
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