The Silly Robots Contest Has One Goal: Don't Be Useful, Make People Laugh

Silly Robots Contest is a San Francisco event where the goal is not usefulness or commercial value, but simply making people laugh. Entries are invited to be whimsical, silly, funny or completely unnecessary, with the event scheduled for September 10, 2026.

The call explicitly welcomes “cursed kinematics,” “unnecessary degrees of freedom” and “beautifully overengineered mechanisms,” celebrating robots that move in the opposite direction from conventional performance competitions.