Student Team's Factory Safety Project Misses Hackathon Prize at MIT Media Lab

Three students spent a weekend at the MIT Media Lab competing in the ScienceClaw Hackathon 2026 and did not win. Their project, QualityRelay SAFE-MESH, focused on manufacturing inspection, checking whether parts that pass individual tolerance tests still fit together correctly. The system lets station agents process evidence locally and uses a safety gate that outputs PASS, HOLD, or REJECT, defaulting to HOLD when evidence is uncertain. In their tests, the local-agent design kept production running on a degraded network where a central server's output dropped sharply. The team says they remain proud of the work despite the result.