Winner was announced at 2020 Web Summit

The SMART project, developed by researchers from five Portuguese institutions and promoted by the MIT Portugal programme, is the winner of the first edition of the AI Moonshot Challenge, a competition organised by the European Space Agency in collaboration with ANI, FCT, Unbabel and the European Space Agency (ESA). The winner was announced on 3 December during the Web Summit 2020, also a partner of the initiative.

Led by the Centre for Natural Resources and Environment (CERENA-IST), the SMART project team will receive 500.000 euros to develop a solution that uses artificial satellite data to combat ocean pollution.

The winning project aims to combine automatic learning with the principles of the laws of physics to build models for predicting and simulating the accumulation of plastic in the ocean. The goal is to use satellite data from the Copernicus programme to determine the appropriate frequencies for the detection of plastic materials in water bodies.

The international AI Moonshot Challenge will return in 2021 for its second edition to find disruptive ideas that combine satellite data and Artificial Intelligence for plastic detection in the Oceans.

Learn more about the AI Moonshot Challenge here