CowTalk elected best project and AI-QUA elected best innovative idea in the 4th edition of AI4ALL
The fourth edition of the AI4ALL programme, launched by the UAB Parc de Recerca, the Computer Vision Centre, the UAB School of Engineering and the CSIC's Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, celebrated the end of the programme with a competition to chose the best project out of all those developed.
At the closing event of this year's edition, participants presented their projects in front of a jury formed by Lissette Lemus, Technology Transfer Manager at the CSIC's Artificial Intelligence Research Institute; Josep Lladós, Director of the Computer Vision Centre; and Esther Parra, researcher at the UPC's Research Centre of Intelligent Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (IDEAI), who evaluated their projects and finally chose the best project and the most innovative idea.
The winning project was CowTalk, proposing the development of an acoustic sensor to detect dairy cattle vocalisations and monitor their well-being. The objective is to identify problems in the well-being of calves and cattle through technology and thus facilitate the work of cattle ranchers. The solution is based on placing acoustic sensors in the cow barns and through an analysis of the sounds, identify respiratory illnesses in calves, detect the moment in which a cow is giving birth, and pain felt during milking.
Behind the project are Heng-Lun Ko, Pol Llonch, Eva Mainau, Raúl David Guevara and Cristian Larrondo, from the UAB AWEC spin-off, and the financial support of La Salle. The technology proposed in the project would allow an early detection of problems, which would then be notified through a mobile app, allowing for early interventions and minimising the effects on the animals' well-being and production levels.
AI-QUA was elected best innovative idea. This project aims to use remote sensing data (satellites) to detect, model and predict marine pollution. The idea, created by Ramon Prat, Sebastià Mijares, Miquel Royo and Bartomeu Alorda, is based on the creation of an automatic system that could estimate the presence of pathogens on beaches on a daily basis, and which would also allow monitoring algal blooms in seas and pn coastlines for the fishing industries.
With this system, short-term predictions of these phenomena could also be made with the aim of being useful in the decisions and products of the fishing and tourist industry.
In addition to these two projects, the 4th edition of the AI4ALL programme also saw the development of the projects LactAI, a comprehensive control system for cheesemaking using AI tools; Healthtek, a platform for the advanced analysis of patients' biometric data to optimise the diagnosis of psychologists within the mental health sector; and AI-Read4U, which proposes the development of a tool that summarises the terms and conditions of applications and websites with the aim of knowing what one is consenting to.
The objective of the AI4ALL programme is to foster the creation of AI-based entrepreneurial projects and technologies. It receives funding from the Catalan Ministry for Business and Labour and is co-funded by the European Social Fund Plus. It is also sponsored by The Collider programme of the Mobile World Capital Barcelona.