Performance Cockpit, a business intelligence system from the start-up Aeroficial Intelligence, was named the 2019 Overall Winner of the Galileo Masters international innovation competition during its awards ceremony, held as part of European Space Week on 4 December in Helsinki, Finland.
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. In this way, it addresses a pressing challenge in an industry that is set to see the world’s aircraft fleet more than double in the next 20 years.
Galileo-Copernicus Synergy Challenge
In addition to the overall prize, 26 more prizes were awarded at this year’s Galileo Masters, including the Galileo-Copernicus Synergy Challenge. This award went to Xylene, an app that revolutionises the way timber is supplied to the market. The concept behind the Xylene app is to document every step of the timber supply chain, from the forest to the final product. This unique Source-2-Store process not only enables supply chain tracking, but also validates the origin of the wood as certified or not.
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By automatically registering GNSS position and consignment volume data, matching this with the individual process steps and generating real-time reports in the event of violations, the app prevents illegal wood from entering the supply chain and reduces fraud. The end customer, in addition to each partner along the supply chain, can visualise the entire supply chain using QR codes. Leveraging Galileo positioning and Copernicus imagery, the app offers the best combination of reliability, feasibility and cost.
Promoting innovation
“Promoting innovation has always been a key goal for the GSA. During our 11 years of partnership with the Galileo Masters, the competition has been an important generator of new market-driven applications and services based on Galileo’s differentiators, and this year has been no different,” said GSA Executive Director Carlo des Dorides. “I would like to congratulate all of the participants in this year’s competition and particularly the winners for their innovative use of Galileo,” he said.
Idea of the year
In the ‘Idea of the Year’ category, the winner was CX-GEODRON – a radar-based drone payload for underground detection. The CX-Geodron project is developing a drone payload based on radar equipment and post-processing techniques for geo-referenced data to complement, and sometimes replace, LiDAR laser technologies and take the next step in underground detection applications.
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The use of drones in non-destructive inspection applications has proven feasible and effective, making this a field with very important growth potential. The accuracy, stability, and flight time of drone platforms have significantly improved and the feasibility of using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems in different applications related to terrestrial observation has been demonstrated. What’s more, the detection of buried objects is also continuing to improve with regard to resolution and depth.
Start-up of the Year
The winner in the ‘Start-up of the Year’ category - PODIS (POst DIstress Signal) - is a client-server IoT solution-as-a-service for automatic crash notification (ACN). The solution’s unique selling point is its patented underlying methodology for filtering out false alarms. Other ACN systems try to filter out false alarms on the client side, which is difficult due to varying vehicle behaviour, while PODIS does this on the server side.
In this way, PODIS maximises the use of the “golden hour”. This is a trauma term that refers to the first hour from the moment a car accident occurs. The goal of trauma professionals is to get injured people to a hospital within one hour to increase their chances of survival.
The Galileo Masters annually awards the best services, products, and business ideas using satellite navigation in everyday life, fostering the development of market-driven applications and identifying the most outstanding business cases related to GNSS, in line with the EU Space Strategy.
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