SMART Project wins first edition of AI Moonshot Challenge

The first edition of the AI Moonshot Challenge distinguished the winner of Call the SMART project, which was awarded 500 thousand euros to develop a solution that uses satellite data and artificial intelligence to combat pollution in the oceans. The winner was announced this Thursday, December 3, during Web Summit 2020.

The SMART project was the proposal presented by the consortium led by CERENA-IST, which is part of the Underwater Systems and Technology Laboratory (FEUP), Associate Laboratory Center for Environmental and Marine Studies (CESAM), Hydrographic Institute and MIT-Portugal, and which proposes the application of several advanced concepts of Artificial Intelligence, with a particular focus on “Physics Informed GANs and Deep Neural Networks”, and combining them with satellite images to develop a solution that allows mitigating the problem of plastic in the ocean.

Using satellite data from the Copernicus program, the SMART team aims to determine which frequencies are appropriate for detecting plastic in bodies of water. This information will be complemented with advanced models that simulate the behavior of the ocean to increase the probability of detecting plastics, a mission made difficult by the size of the debris and the resolution of currently available satellite images.

The AI Moonshot Challenge, promoted by the Portuguese Space Agency in cooperation with the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), Unbabel, European Space Agency (ESA), National Innovation Agency (ANI) and Web Summit, is a Call with an international aspect that aims to find disruptive ideas that combine satellite data and Artificial Intelligence to detect plastics in the oceans. THE Call will have a new edition in 2021, whose participation rules will be announced soon.