Upgrade announces three winning projects of graduates

Tracking Endangered Animals in the Wild using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles; Water Loss Preservation (Smart Water Loss Control Device); and Navigationeye projects named winners of 4th edition of programme

MUSCAT: Upgrade programme, a programme that transforms the best graduation projects in the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies into successful ICT startups, announced via videoconferencing the three winning projects for its fourth edition.

Out of the 75 applications from 19 academic institutions, the winning projects included ‘Tracking Endangered Animals in the Wild using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles’, ‘Water Loss Preservation (Smart Water Loss Control Device)’ and ‘Navigationeye’ .

For ‘Tracking Endangered Animals in the Wild using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles’, it was prepared by Younis al Jadeedi, Mohammed al Sarhani and Muhannad al Rumaidhi from Sultan Qaboos University (SQU). The primary objective of the project is to develop a system to recognise the endangered animals in the reserves. The system utilises Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Artificial Intelligence.

‘Water Loss Preservation (Smart Water Loss Control Device)’ by Ahmed al Azri, Mohammed al Senani and Shabib al Busaidy from Middle East College involves manufacturing a technical and smart device to maintain the water networks from any losses.

As for ‘Navigation-eye’ by Taif al Badi, Moza al Jabri and Athari al Ajmi from Sultan Qaboos University (SQU), it tackles the issue that a driver face when focusing on both the GPS systems and the roadway while driving. The Navigation Eye device is able to merge the AugmentedReality technology with HeadsUp-display technology so that all the instructions that are provided by the normal GPS application will be displayed in front of the driver’s line of sight so that the driving experience become more safe and focused. During the event, Dr Saif

Hiddabi, Under-secretary al of the Ministry of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Innovation for Research and Innovation, said, “We are happy to see that the fourth edition of Upgrade has also attracted a large number of these young people who were able to compete with their graduation projects and be incubated in this programme, with the hopes of providing the winning teams with job opportunities and achieving the objectives of Oman Vision 2040”.

Talal Said al Maamari, CEO of Omantel added, “The programme seeks to benefit from the graduation projects and research presented by students of majors related to information and communication technology, which seek to find innovative solutions to the challenges and problems we face in our daily lives and to transform these research into innovative projects by providing the winning projects with the necessary funding, guidance and other empowerment tools.

Upgrade is a collaborative partnership between the Research and Innovation Sector of the Ministry of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Innovation, Sas Centre for Entrepreneurship, Omantel, Riyada, Oman Technology Fund (OTF), Al Raffd Fund and the National Youth Committee.