Upgrade winners excel in innovation and technology
Published: 05:12 PM,Dec 27,2021 | EDITED : 09:12 PM,Dec 27,2021
Upgrade Winners
MUSCAT: The 5th edition of Upgrade, a programme that transforms the best graduation projects in the 4th Industrial Revolution technologies into successful ICT startups to bring socio-economic benefit to the Sultanate of Oman, has announced the three winning projects for this year at the 8th Annual Research Forum.
Upgrade is a competition-based programme in which the winners will be assisted to transform their graduation projects into startups in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector on topics such as Smart Cities, Internet of Things, Information Security, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Blockchain.
Out of the 10 finalists, the winning projects of this year’s Upgrade programme were awarded to ‘Development of AI based Arabic Natural Language Processing of sentiment analysis application software for national security and planning’, ‘Industrial IoT for Operational Efficiency Improvement’ and ‘Thermal Infra-Red Imaging Assessment of Solar PV Modules’. The winning teams will be provided with incubation services, business and marketing consultation, networking and mentoring opportunities, as well as educational awareness programmes that include a group of workshops and lectures in the incubation centre.
For ‘Development of AI based Arabic Natural Language Processing of sentiment analysis application software for national security and planning’ prepared by Ali al Harthi and Safiya al Harthi from Middle East College, they aimed to develop two main natural language processing (NLP) applications that are beneficial for the Oman; creating an Arabic Omani Dialect corpus (AODC) including more than 10 thousand statements and developing an NLP sentiment analysis based on AODC. The project focused on NLP since it can be considered as one of the 4IR core technologies and its applications may have big impacts on the national economy, society and government services.
With ‘Industrial IoT for Operational Efficiency Improvement’, it was prepared by Ahmed Al Ghadani from the National University of Science and Technology. The project focused on the integration of existing infrastructure and assets using IoT, Big Data, and AI analytics for key insights and data-driven decisions to help industries improve two core business objectives: Asset Uptime and Operational Efficiency.
As for ‘Thermal Infra-Red Imaging Assessment of Solar PV Modules’ prepared by Al Qaisar al Aamri, Majid al Omairi and Sultan Al Shabibi from Sultan Qaboos University, a system composed of drone and thermal camera was designed and implemented. The system will automate the inspection process of the whole solar photovoltaic (PV) plant to solve faulty modules with the ordinary inspection process, which will greatly reduce the cost and time of the operation and maintenance as well as improve system efficiency and equipment life.
Upgrade is a competition-based programme in which the winners will be assisted to transform their graduation projects into startups in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector on topics such as Smart Cities, Internet of Things, Information Security, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Blockchain.
Out of the 10 finalists, the winning projects of this year’s Upgrade programme were awarded to ‘Development of AI based Arabic Natural Language Processing of sentiment analysis application software for national security and planning’, ‘Industrial IoT for Operational Efficiency Improvement’ and ‘Thermal Infra-Red Imaging Assessment of Solar PV Modules’. The winning teams will be provided with incubation services, business and marketing consultation, networking and mentoring opportunities, as well as educational awareness programmes that include a group of workshops and lectures in the incubation centre.
For ‘Development of AI based Arabic Natural Language Processing of sentiment analysis application software for national security and planning’ prepared by Ali al Harthi and Safiya al Harthi from Middle East College, they aimed to develop two main natural language processing (NLP) applications that are beneficial for the Oman; creating an Arabic Omani Dialect corpus (AODC) including more than 10 thousand statements and developing an NLP sentiment analysis based on AODC. The project focused on NLP since it can be considered as one of the 4IR core technologies and its applications may have big impacts on the national economy, society and government services.
With ‘Industrial IoT for Operational Efficiency Improvement’, it was prepared by Ahmed Al Ghadani from the National University of Science and Technology. The project focused on the integration of existing infrastructure and assets using IoT, Big Data, and AI analytics for key insights and data-driven decisions to help industries improve two core business objectives: Asset Uptime and Operational Efficiency.
As for ‘Thermal Infra-Red Imaging Assessment of Solar PV Modules’ prepared by Al Qaisar al Aamri, Majid al Omairi and Sultan Al Shabibi from Sultan Qaboos University, a system composed of drone and thermal camera was designed and implemented. The system will automate the inspection process of the whole solar photovoltaic (PV) plant to solve faulty modules with the ordinary inspection process, which will greatly reduce the cost and time of the operation and maintenance as well as improve system efficiency and equipment life.