FCT, PT Space, ESA and Unbabel launch global AI and Space Technologies competition

The Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), the Portuguese Space Agency (PT Space), the European Space Agency (ESA) and Unbabel Labs are launching the AI Moonshot Challenge, a worldwide competition offering 500,000 euros to those who develop solutions to environmental problems using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and new emerging space technologies.

It is the world's first competition combining AI and emerging space technologies to find solutions to complex climate change problems in terms of detecting, locating and monitoring waste in the oceans.

Teams will have access to AI resources, Earth observation data from satellite constellations and supercomputing capabilities.

After the Minister of State, Economy and Digital Transition, Pedro Siza Vieira, announced the AI Moonshot Challenge at the opening ceremony of Web Summit 2019, the government and the partners involved in the project presented the details of the project at a press conference today.

Designed to create positive social change on a large scale, the AI Moonshot Challenge challenges teams from around the world to solve complex environmental problems through Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other emerging space technologies.

Fifty years after humanity took its big step into space, the AI Moonshot Challenge opens up the opportunity for talents from all over the world to use technology and data to find solutions to the most pressing problems here on Earth. In this sense, by attracting and supporting the challenge of finding ambitious solutions for large-scale change, this competition will position Portugal and Europe at the forefront of Artificial Intelligence and emerging space technologies.

The inaugural edition will focus on Waste Management and Sustainability, namely the detection, localization and monitoring of maritime waste on a planetary scale. The challenge will be to combine massive sources of data from a variety of sensors of different types, including Earth observation data, to identify marine waste throughout the water column (floating and non-floating). Teams from around the world will compete to find the best solution to this challenging and complex environmental problem, applying advanced Artificial Intelligence techniques to analyze large amounts of data.

By providing access to AI tools and supercomputing resources, the competition will attract diverse participants, including students, startups, research centers and universities.

Pre-registration officially opens today at moonshotchallenge.ai, where participants can also find a detailed timetable. Starting in January 2020, participants will have nine months to develop, experiment with and validate their AI solutions using large amounts of Earth data.

The winners will be announced in November next year at Web Summit 2020 and will receive a prize of 500,000 euros to train a team of experts and carry out additional research in Portugal for a period of up to two years.

The AI Moonshot Challenge is the result of a unique partnership between FCT, the Portuguese Space Agency (Portugal Space), the European Space Agency (ESA) and Unbabel Labs, Unbabel's disruptive projects team. This partnership will be developed in close collaboration with the Minho Advanced Computing Center (MACC) and is promoted through the National Innovation Agency (ANI).

For more information, see moonshotchallenge.ai or contact info@moonshotchallenge.ai.