Leap of Fate 2026 – Innovation Together

AI continued to play a major role in this year’s projects. Niilo26, which earned second place in the voting, explored RAG-based conversational AI by recreating the online persona of Finnish YouTuber/Discord personality Niilo22. The project combined Discord chat history, curated Q&A data, ChromaDB retrieval, DeepSeek LLM responses and ElevenLabs speech synthesis into a FastAPI + React application capable of answering in-character with both text and voice. The result is chatbots capable of answering in-character, referencing historical discussions, a debate mode that lets two AI personas argue a topic while generating spoken audio responses.

Another project, “AI Traffic Light Awareness Assistant” explored real-time driver assistance using YOLOv8, OpenCV and computer vision to detect traffic light state changes and alert distracted drivers when lights turn green.

Several projects also explored local AI tooling and retrieval systems, including AI-generated radio broadcasts, AI-powered lunch recommendation agent, Local RAG tool, Periodic LLM summary for WRM test rack logs, etc

Leap of Fate 2026 also showcased a strong hardware and maker spirit, with participants combining electronics, embedded systems and creative prototyping to bring their ideas to life.

The third-place “E-ink Dashboard” project demonstrated how a simple Raspberry Pi and e-ink display can become an elegant information hub, presenting weather forecasts, astronomy images, calendars, comics and other useful content within a stylish picture-frame setup.

Other hardware-focused projects explored a wide range of technologies and use cases, including:

• Weather stations
• Home automation systems
• Custom PCB design and prototyping
• RFID and authentication experiments
• Real-time acoustic tracking systems
• Raspberry Pi-based infrastructure and networking solutions

One project investigated Hermes bytecode internals and reverse engineering of React Native Android applications, demonstrating how application behavior can be modified at the bytecode level. Another investigated unconventional data exfiltration techniques from air-gapped systems using QR codes and barcode readers.

There were also projects focused on AI-assisted pentesting, YubiKey experimentation, VPN setups and Blockchain-based licensing concepts.

“Duck hunt” brought together OpenCV, Godot, Java and .NET into an interactive game prototype inspired by the classic arcade experience.

This year’s winning project, “The Secret of Fire Island (Palosaari)” transformed the Palosaari office and its surroundings into a great adventure game. Using generative AI for much of the artwork, assets, and development workflow, the team created a playable exploration experience featuring multiple areas, characters, puzzles, and a story inspired by familiar locations. Despite being built under tight time constraints, the project delivered.

One of the best parts of Leap of Fate is that the event is not only about polished outcomes. some teams achieved exactly what they planned. Others discovered unexpected technical limitations, changed direction midway, or spent most of their time debugging infrastructure, tuning models, or redesigning architectures. Those lessons are just as valuable.

Leap of Fate continues to provide a space where prototypes, strange ideas, learning experiences, and ambitious technical experiments all belong together.