Time to roll up your sleeves: Galileo Masters 2021 now open!

The 2021 edition of the Galileo Masters opens for submissions on April 19. As in previous years, the 2021 competition is looking for services, applications and business cases that use EGNSS (Galileo and EGNOS), either alone or in synergy with other space components, to tackle important challenges faced by business and society. Want to take your EGNSS-based innovative idea from the drawing board to the market? Click here for more information.

The prize pool in this year’s Galileo Masters is EUR 785,000, which will be spread across seven key challenges, three of which are supported by the European GNSS Agency (GSA). The topics of the three GSA challenges build on last year themes, so if you had an idea for last year’s competition that you didn’t manage to bring to fruition, now is the time to dust it off and get it ready for this year!

3 GSA challenges

The EU Space Programme offers free and open data and services that can help monitor and potentially mitigate the impact of the coronavirus outbreak. This is the focus of the first challenge from the GSA - Space for Being Safe and Healthy. Under this challenge, we are looking for solutions that use downstream space data provided by Galileo, EGNOS and/or Copernicus to help stem the spread of COVID-19 or to mitigate its impact in the short and long term. 

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In our Space for Fun challenge, we are looking for solutions that use Galileo and EGNOS data in the gaming, sports and leisure, and tourism markets. This challenge covers a number of market segments and so there is a wide scope for innovative ideas requiring accurate and authenticated positioning. Finally, we are looking for new applications to address other ongoing challenges, including climate change and environmental degradation, which require urgent attention and innovative solutions. These are the focus of the third GSA challenge - Space for our Planet.

“The COVID pandemic is still with us and, while there were some excellent ideas in last year’s competition for solutions to help society mitigate and adapt to the effects of the pandemic, there is still a lot of scope to leverage Galileo and EGNOS, either alone or in synergy with Earth observation data from Copernicus, to help us in facing this challenge,” said Rodrigo da Costa, Executive Director at the GSA. “This is why we have decided to give innovators another opportunity to put forward their ideas this year,” he said.

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Through the Galileo Masters, the GSA supports entrepreneurs and start-ups in making their ideas a reality, producing services and applications that respond to societal needs and that address some of the most pressing challenges that we currently face. Another initiative that supports start-ups, and one that might be potentially very useful for Galileo Masters applicants, helping them to get inspiration and to flesh out their ideas, is the new Space Crossroads – a series of online broadcasts where industry leaders, experts, investors and big players share their space experience.

Inspiration from past ideas

If an idea for an application has not yet crystallised in your mind, perhaps you can take some inspiration from past winners of the Galileo Masters prize. The overall prize in the Galileo Masters 2020  went to Angsa Robotics for “Clive,” Germany’s first autonomous trash collection robot, which collects small pieces of rubbish left on grass or gravel that would otherwise cause ecological and economic problems. Thanks to its unique artificial neural network architecture, “Clive” can move independently while detecting and localising individual objects, which enables it to clean grass and gravel areas.

The overall winner of the 2019 Galileo Masters was Performance Cockpit, a business intelligence system that aims to lessen the environmental footprint of the aviation sector by increasing operational efficiency and considerably reducing fuel consumption. The Aeroficial Intelligence system leverages Galileo positioning and EGNOS augmentation in data-driven solutions that increase operational efficiency and considerably reduce fuel consumption in the aviation industry.

Inspired? Sign up now and take your idea to the next level in the Galileo Masters 2021!

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