Global space technology innovation program, GRAVITY Challenge, has announced five innovator teams as Round 04 Challenge Champions to pilot space-powered solutions to real world problems.
Round 04 attracted 34 applications from innovator teams across the globe, with eight teams invited to collaborate with challenger organisations.
Over the past six months, innovators have been working closely with organisations to ideate solutions ranging from helping banking customers in the UK measure their carbon footprint, to delivering on-the-spot natural disaster payments in Japan.
As part of this round’s success stories, two teams from Australia and the United Kingdom have been chosen by local challenger, the Department for Infrastructure and Transport (DIT) to advance to the next stage.
The South Australian Government department put the call out to innovators to help identify ways to leverage space technology to assess conditions on the state’s road network and eliminate the resource-heavy need to visually inspect them.
The solution from joint UK and Australian-based team, Digital Content Analysis Technology (D-CAT), offers new insights to improve road maintenance and planning, as well as increased awareness and responsiveness to environmental changes to the network such as flooding.
UK team, Spottitt, will develop a satellite-based, remote, scalable and high frequency pavement health monitoring solution, which will significantly reduce the estimated per km monitored cost compared to current survey vehicles.
The champion teams will be invited back by DIT to complete the scale phase of the GRAVITY Challenge, forming a commercial agreement to develop a proof of concept.
GRAVITY Challenge is a global space technology innovation program which pairs innovators with organisations to provide cutting-edge solutions to real-world issues using space technology and capability.
The Government of South Australia are proud to be a founding sponsor of the GRAVITY Challenge.
View the full list of Round 04 Challenge Champions
Gravity Challenge Round 05 is just around the corner – Register your interest.
