Best Beginner Hack (378 teams) · TreeHacks · Feb 2026

A robot that watches for the moment someone's heart stops. When it happens, it drives itself across the room and starts CPR while the ambulance is still on the way.

Why it won: Survival drops about 7 to 10 percent for every minute without CPR, and even trained rescuers tire after two minutes of compressions; a robot does not panic and does not tire. More than 350,000 Americans have cardiac arrests outside hospitals every year, so the minutes it buys are not hypothetical. It also won the beginner category: a team new to hackathons built this in one weekend.