The Vindo Team from the Netherlands is announced as the winner of the FabSpace 2.0 Prize in the third edition of ActInSpace® 2018 which was held on the 25th – 26th of May 2018 all over the world, knocking out other 54 applications. The announcement took place during the finals of ActInSpace® 2018 on the 27th of June 2018 in Toulouse, France. This year, FabSpace 2.0 is being one of the official partners of ActInSpace 2018.
ActInSpace® is an international innovation contest inspiring young women and men worldwide to meet challenges based on space technologies, data, patents and infrastructures to launch start-ups into all areas of our daily lives. Designed for students but open to everyone, the objective of the contest is to foster entrepreneurship, encourage start-up creation and promote the use of space technologies and space acquired data to change citizen’s lives, to boost employment and to protect our planet.
This year the contest was fulfilling an international ambition which are transforming an essentially European edition into an international edition; bringing together 53 cities from 32 countries in all continents; attracting 3400+ participants with 510 teams working on 60+ different challenges; and creating between 20 and 30 new start-ups.
Picture 1. All of the participants and organisers were posing on the stage during the finals of ActInSpace® 2018 in Toulouse, France
As partner, FabSpace 2.0 provided three challenges based on Earth Observation Data (links: http://bit.ly/FS-AIS2018) and dedicated prizes which are a free trip to Toulouse to attend the ActInSpace® 2018 international final; receive a mentoring program by experts in selected area; and a meeting with Airbus representative in Toulouse. There were 11 FabSpaces who are involved as organiser of ActInSpace® 2018 including FabSpaces France: Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nice, Brest; FabSpace Poland: Warsaw; FabSpace Germany: Darmstadt; FabSpace Greece: Athens; FabSpace Cameroon: Yaundé; FabSpace Cyprus: Limassu; FabSpace Czech Republic: Prague; and FabSpace Netherlands: Noordwijk. The FabSpace 2.0´s challenges attracted many teams from various locations worldwide such as Brazil, New Zealand, Tunisia, Nigeria, Gabon, Latvia, Azerbaijan, France, Portugal, Greece, and the United Sates.
Picture 2. Josiane Mothe from UPS, the Coordinator of FabSpace 2.0 and Philippe Lattes from Aerospace Valley (FabSpace 2.0 partner) announced the FabSpace 2.0 winning team
Josiane Mothe from University Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier (UPS), the Coordinator of FabSpace 2.0 project said: “With more than 50 teams participating on the challenges provided by FabSpace 2.0 at ActInSpace® 2018; it has been a real success. Moreover, Vindo’s application idea is completely in line with the overall objective of FabSpace 2.0: to stimulate open innovation in Earth Observation to make our planet a better place to live in. We hope that many new innovative start-ups like Vindo can be created and developed in the near future.”
Vindo, the winning team of FabSpace 2.0 Prize was competing in the COPERNICUS APP LAB challenge located in the Netherlands, one of the FabSpace 2.0 organiser in collaboration with the local ESA BIC. Vindo App successfully won the competition by providing an innovative idea with the concept of letting people find the ideal city within the App and urges cities to be shaped after their needs. The App is using Copernicus data.
Picture 3. Josiane Mothe (in the middle), the Coordinator of FabSpace 2.0, together with Vindo Team members during the finals of ActInSpace® 2018 in Toulouse, France
“Winning the FabSpace 2.0 Earth Observation Prize at the ActInSpace® 2018 is a great honour for us. The support of Fabspace 2.0 encourages us to develop our application further and shows that we can have a positive impact on society. We want to thank FabSpace 2.0 and the ActInSpace® Team for the opportunity to come to Toulouse to meet other teams from all over the world and exchange ideas.” said Tristan Faschinger, an Aerospace Engineering student at TU Delft, one of Vindo team member. To find out more about the Vindo App, simply watch their video (including a demo) on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZ5TzjYZg_E.
FabSpace 2.0 is proud to be partner of ActInSpace® 2018 and hopes that this event will stimulate the uptake and reuse of space technology and data and identify future applicants for ESA BICs and partner incubators. A full list of the challenges winners can be found at: https://actinspace.org/
