Following the many applications to the MyGalileoApp competition, the top 30 recently selected to proceed to the development phase have now been revealed. The projects cover a range of applications that leverage Galileo’s added accuracy to provide solutions to social and environmental challenges. You can check out the full list here.
The European GNSS Agency’s (GSA) MyGalileoApp competition sparked significant interest among the app development community, with the high number of entries in the competition underlining the value that app developers place on Galileo’s precise positioning. In total, 148 ideas were submitted for initial consideration, covering a broad range of applications providing solutions to social and environmental challenges. Reflecting the fact that Galileo is a truly global system, the ideas came from a wide geographical area – from Belgium to Bangladesh – with a total of 35 different nationalities represented.
The 30 shortlisted projects were selected based on their level of innovation. Other key criteria taken into consideration included their market potential, their technical feasibility and the extent to which they leverage Galileo. These cover eight of the 11 innovation areas open to submissions. The innovation areas with the most selected projects in the second round of the competition are Mapping, GIS and Agriculture, with a total of eight projects, followed by Augmented Reality and Games, with four.
What next?
The first development phase of the competition will take place until the 15th July 2019. The teams will have access to 1-to-1 mentoring sessions for a period of time to help them develop a business plan and support with coding with support from Google, Ubuntu, Verhaert and Broadcom, both in technology and in business.
Then, on the 31st of July, the 30 ideas teams will be narrowed down further, with a maximum of 10 teams being selected to advance to the second development phase, at which stage the projects should deliver a finalised version of their app with 100% functionality.
Those that succeed will be invited to the finals, to be held in October 2019, where they will present their application to the GSA evaluation board. Following the presentations, the judges will announce the winners, with the first-place winner receiving a EUR 100,000 prize. The runner up and third place finishers will receive EUR 50,000 and EUR 30,000 respectively.
Media note: This feature article is edited with permission from the European GNSS Agency (GSA) following two of their announcements. The originals can be found here and here.