DroneHacks 2026: A 48-Hour GPS-Denied Autonomy Challenge at Stanford

May 22–24, 2026 (now postponed to Nov 6–8)

Stanford Robotics is excited to announce DroneHacks 2026, a new student robotics competition bringing together engineers and researchers from across North America to tackle one of the hardest problems in robotics: autonomous flight without GPS.

DroneHacks will take place at Stanford University, with the main competition hosted indoors on the second floor of Tresidder Memorial Union. Over 120 participants from Stanford and universities across North America will gather for an intense 48-hour engineering challenge focused on perception, autonomy, and real-world robotic navigation.

The event is organized by the Stanford Robotics Club in partnership with the Stanford Robotics Center (SRC) and The Stanford Computer Forum.

The Challenge

Teams will spend 48 hours designing and deploying autonomous systems capable of navigating a GPS-denied indoor environment.

Participants will program their drones to:

• Navigate a complex indoor obstacle course

• Perform real-time mapping of an unknown environment

• Execute fully autonomous flight without external positioning infrastructure

The competition environment will simulate the kinds of conditions autonomous systems increasingly face in the real world: limited sensing, uncertain environments, and no satellite navigation.

Custom UAV Kits

Each team will receive a custom drone kit designed and built by StanfordUAV, the UAV division of the Stanford Robotics Club.

The platform combines research-grade autonomy hardware with a robust airframe designed for rapid experimentation.

Drone platform components include:

• Custom carbon fiber quadcopter frame

• Luxonis OAK-D S2 stereo AI vision camera

• NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano onboard computer

• PX4-compatible flight controller

• Modular sensor and compute integration for rapid development

  
  

Participants and Travel Support

DroneHacks will host over 120 students from Stanford and universities across North America. To make the event accessible to the best teams regardless of location, students accepted from outside California will receive travel funding to attend.