After months of intense iteration and innovation, US Ignite, Texas A&M University, and Texas Engineering Extension Services (TEEX) are thrilled to announce the winners of the “Smart Communities, Smart Responders: An Artificial Intelligence for Internet of Things Prize Competition” (AI3 Prize Competition), sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Public Safety Communications Research Division (PSCR). The competition asked participants to develop solutions for collecting and creating real-time visualizations of IoT sensor data to aid public safety leaders and first responders in a crisis. The three exceptional teams that emerged victorious, showcased groundbreaking solutions that will revolutionize disaster management with new information from real-time data sources and AI-driven technology.
After rigorous evaluation and live demonstrations at TEEX Disaster City®, two teams, CNA-riis and Engineering Dynamics, emerged as the 1st place winners of the AI3 Prize Competition. Each team took home a $90,000 grand prize, and both solutions demonstrated creativity, technical excellence, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by public safety leaders and first responders in the age of IoT and big data.
CNA-riis developed an application called First Responder Awareness Monitoring during Emergencies (FRAME). FRAME can collect and organize data from building sensors or video feeds and provide a real-time picture of what is happening during an emergency for first responders using smart technologies like AI.
“Winning the AI3 competition is incredibly exciting and fills our CNA-RIIS team with motivation to face new challenges,” said CNA Research Analyst John Crissman. “We eagerly look forward to our next steps where we will enhance FRAME’s capabilities, rigorously test its functionalities, and prepare for its use, aiming to deliver a game-changing solution for the first responder community.”
Engineering Dynamics’ solution uses AI algorithms and synthetic IoT data generation to make accurate predictions about unknown IoT devices. Their approach prioritized efficient algorithms whenever possible, with the goal of deploying them to standard mobile devices carried by first responders.
“Our participation in the AI3 competition has been a tremendous learning experience, allowing us to better comprehend the real challenges faced by first responders,” said Bethel Quick, Lead Production Engineer at Engineering Dynamics. “Looking ahead, we are eager to use our victory as motivation to further refine and commercialize our product within the next 18 months, ultimately prioritizing the safety of those who selflessly serve our communities.”
The third-place winner, Team IoT-GPT, led by Global Quality Corp (GQC) also gained praise and a $40,000 prize for their innovative advanced software solution that uses state-of-the-art AI technology, including Chat GPT, to assist first responders in emergency situations. Their system can interpret data from specialized sensors and turn it into easy-to-understand English sentences, and it can also transform complex data into easily understandable graphs, maps, and charts.
“Our team was excited to see that our innovative work over the past year led to a positive mile point in our journey to provide disruptive and inexpensive technologies to address environmental and emergency preparedness challenges,” said Dr. Sudhir Kshirsagar, P.E., President, GQC and Team IoT-GPT lead. “We will be seeking partners to help us implement these technologies in domestic and international markets.”
Leading technological advancements like 5G infrastructure, smart buildings, and smart transportation yield a vast amount of data about the physical environment. However, the overwhelming volume of that data and the need for effective organization pose a true challenge for public safety leaders and first responders. The AI3 Prize Competition challenged contestants to develop a solution that would generate user-friendly real-time data visualizations by integrating information from IoT sensors and other known and unknown sources.
“Our main goal with the AI3 Prize Competition was to help first responders resolve intricate issues on the ground during an emergency situation,” said Walt Magnussen, Texas A&M University – Internet2 Technology Evaluation Center. “The solutions demonstrated by the AI3 Prize Competition finalists impressively offered unique approaches to harnessing AI and IoT data for public safety to equip first responders with improved situational awareness during emergency scenarios.”
“Disaster City proved a perfect operational testing ground for the AI3 Prize Competition solutions, where we could stress-test the competing systems’ ability to process, evaluate, contextualize and categorize known and unknown data,” said Ray Ivie, Director, Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service (TEEX). “It was great to see the situational awareness platforms using live and simulated sensor data to generate actionable information for first responders.”
The AI3 Prize Competition showcased the immense talent and creativity of all participating teams and highlighted the power of collaboration between academia, industry, and government entities. The AI systems demonstrated during this competition have the potential to transform the way public safety data is utilized and most importantly enhance the safety and well-being of communities across the nation.
“We are proud of the collaborative spirit that has driven the success of the AI3 Prize Competition,” said Mojdeh Mahdavi, from US Ignite. “The dedication and ingenuity displayed by participants underscore the transformative power of collaboration between academia, industry, and government and the winning solutions serve to illuminate the future of smart public safety.”
For more information about the AI3 Prize Competition and to learn more about the winning solutions, please visit https://www.us-ignite.org/program/startup-support/nist-iot-competition/.
About NIST
Founded in 1901, NIST is a non-regulatory federal agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce. NIST’s mission is to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life. To learn more about NIST, visit NIST.gov.
Since 2002, NIST’s Public Safety Communications Research Division (PSCR) has worked to drive innovation and advance public safety communication technologies through cutting-edge research and development. PSCR works directly with first responders and the solver community to address public safety’s urgent need to access the same broadband communications and state-of-the-art technologies that consumers on commercial networks now expect.
About Texas A&M University (TAMU):
As one of the world’s leading research institutions, Texas A&M is at the forefront in making significant contributions to scholarship and discovery, including in science and technology. Research conducted at Texas A&M generated annual expenditures of more than $952 million in fiscal year 2019. Texas A&M ranked in the top 20 of the most recent National Science Foundation Higher Education Research and Development survey based on expenditures of more than $922 million in fiscal year 2018. Texas A&M’s research creates new knowledge that provides basic, fundamental, and applied contributions resulting, in many cases, in economic benefits to the state, nation, and world. Research.tamu.edu
About TEEX:
The Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service (TEEX) is an internationally recognized leader in the delivery of emergency response, homeland security and workforce training, exercises, technical assistance, product assessments and economic development. A member of The Texas A&M University System, TEEX served more than 210,000 people from across the United States and 126 countries last year through hands-on training and technical services.
About US Ignite:
US Ignite is a high‐tech nonprofit with a mission to accelerate the smart community movement. Our public-private partnership programs leverage advanced networking and data science to drive key outcomes for communities. Our work also enables new opportunities for wireless and IoT research designed to help narrow the gap between cutting‐edge experimentation and scalable, real‐world technology deployments. For more information, visit: www.us-ignite.org
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