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

The 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 that offers 500 thousand 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 that combines 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 partners involved in the project, presented the project details today at a press conference.

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 the opportunity for talent from around the world to use technology and data to find solutions to the most pressing problems here on Earth. In that 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, tracking and monitoring of marine debris on a planetary scale. The challenge will be to combine massive data sources from a variety of sensors of different types, including Earth observation data, to identify marine debris 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 massive 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 schedule. 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 form a team of experts and conduct additional research in Portugal for 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 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