25-11-2021
Dário Pedro and Francisco Nogueira, respectively student and alumnus at the NOVA School of Science and Technology, are the winners of the Academy and Startup categories of the fifth edition of the Altice International Innovation Award, an innovation award that aims to reinforce Portugal's position in the development of innovation and recognize entrepreneurship and national talent.
Dário Pedro, student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering PhD programme, stood out in the Academy category with his project 'Collision Avoidance on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles using Deep Neural Networks', which aims to identify an answer to avoid the collision of unmanned aerial vehicles through the use of Deep Neural Networks. Unmanned aerial vehicles can allow multiple applications, such as shipping goods, security, or, in the long term, transporting people. This solution helps to resolve the city's traffic problems, but since it requires a high level of safety and protection, Dário Pedro's work proposes a neural solution to prevent collision between static and moving objects, through use of artificial intelligence.
"It is a significant honor to receive such a prestigious award. This award recognizes not only my academic merit, but also the quality of teaching at the NOVA School of Science and Technology and the work developed at the company Beyond Vision. The future will have multiple applications with drones. That is inevitable. Developments like the one presented in my PhD thesis, will accelerate its implementation in society and increase the level of reliability and acceptance. Solutions like autonomous air transport will simplify the life of all citizens of big cities, optimizing hundreds of lost hours per individual", admits Dário Pedro.
The work is a good example of partnership and knowledge transfer between academia and the business world. The work has been supervised by Professors André Mora and José Manuel Fonseca from DEEC and also has the support of the company Beyond Vision under the supervision of Dr. Luis Campos.
“It is with great happiness that we see our students being distinguished in this recognized technology award. These are projects with enormous potential for society, in the two areas in which they operate, and we believe this distinction will help them reach the next stage of work development”, says Virgílio Cruz Machado, Director of the NOVA School of Science and Technology.
The Altice International Innovation Award, which had its first edition in 2016, aims to distinguish masters and doctoral students in Portugal, but also entrepreneurs and startups in the incubation phase and with a branch in Portugal or France.
In press
Prémio de inovação para sistema de voo sem piloto (Diário de Notícias)
Conhecidos os grandes vencedores dos Awards da Altice (Exame Informática)
Estão escolhidos os seis finalistas do AItice International Innovation Award 2021 (Executive Digest)