A project on ‘Tracking Endangered Animals in the Wild using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles’, prepared by Younis Al Jadeedi, Mohammed Al Sarhani and Muhannad Al Rumaidhi from Sultan Qaboos University is among the three winners of this year’s Upgrade.

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.

Upgrade, a programme that transforms the best graduation projects in the fourth Industrial Revolution technologies into successful ICT startups, announced the three winning projects for its fourth edition on Tuesday, December 8, 2020 virtually.

Of the 75 applications from 19 academic institutions, the winning projects were ‘Tracking Endangered Animals in the Wild using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles’, ‘Water Loss Preservation (Smart Water Loss Control Device)’ and ‘Navigation-Eye’.

‘Water Loss Preservation (Smart Water Loss Control Device)’ by Ahmed Al Azri, Mohammed Al Senani and Shabib Al Busaidi from Middle East College involves manufacturing technical and smart devices to protect 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, it tackles the issue that a driver faces when focusing on both the GPS systems and the roadway while driving.

The Navigation Eye device is able to merge the Augmented-Reality technology with Heads-Up-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 becomes more safe and focused.

During the event, Dr Saif Al Hiddabi, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Higher Education, 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 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 Saeed Al Mamari, 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 this 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, Research and Innovation, Sas Centre for Entrepreneurship, Ministry of Technology and Communications, Omantel, Riyada, Oman Technology Fund (OTF), Al Raffd Fund and the National Youth Committee.

Source: https://timesofoman.com/article/project-to-track-endagered-animals-with-uavs-wins-at-4th-upgrade