The ICT Proposer’s Day will take place on the 9th and 10th of November 2017, in Budapest. During that day, 20 of the best EU-founded innovators, already identified, will compete for the Innovation Radar Prize 2017, initiative of the European Commission to detect high potential entrepreneurs. There are 5 categories, in which the candidates will compete: Industrial and Enabling Tech, Excellent science, Best Young SME, Tech for Society and Best Early Stage Innovation. The jury of experts will choose a winner for each category and a general one.
There are 4 finalists per category, let’s have a look at one of them per each category:
Industrial and Enabling Tech – CATEC, Centro Avanzado de Tecnologias Aerospaciales (Spain), since 2011, is leader in aerial robotics manipulation having developed the first drone in the world with advanced aerial manipulation capabilities. They believe that drones would be more useful and helpful if they could also “touch and feel”, instead of just “see” from the air. Lately, they designed a drone that is able to do inspections, which require contact. This nomination gives them a major visibility and it could to increase the interest on that kind of technology.
Excellent science – UNIVERSITY COLLEGE CORK (Ireland) , they develop new ways and tools to “see” cells/molecules in the body. They developed a novel platforms and reagents that make possible an optical imaging of a certain number of molecules and before it was not possible. These imaging platforms remove barriers that have prevented potential users of OI from exploiting this technology in the past.
Best Young SME – GRAVITY R&D (Hungary) is an open – source software and is an engine vendor, which offers a product portfolio called YUSP. It includes various modules that pointed to the scope of the digital personalization. The researchers are focused on resolving the challenges of online personalization (cold – start problem, intent – based recommendation) so as to improve YUSP’s competitive advantages.
Tech for Society – NetwellCASALA (Ireland) is a multidisciplinary research centre in Dundalk Institute of Technology, working with the aim to improve communities, environment and technologies. They developed a Subject Information Management System (SIMS), which enables service managers to aggregate data/information from different data sources, in order to support health self – management.
Best Early Stage Innovation – GAMING SOLUTIONS FOR THE CREATION OF A MODERNISED SKILLED WORKFORCE (The Netherlands). RAGE makes possible the spreading of new methods, approaches to support educational stakeholders in order to boost the creation of a modernised skilled workforce. The research and innovation team are focused on the reusable components of APPLIED GAMING. More than 40 components are available, all of them providing pedagogically-oriented functions to support game-based learning (such as earning analytics, emotion evaluation, natural language processing, adaptation methods).
All we can say is Good Luck to all the finalists!