On Tuesday, March 30, at 2:30 p.m., the awards ceremony for Avante 2020 will take place. The call is organized by the Chilean Navy together with Know Hub Chile and AthenaLab. Nine participating teams are developing dual-use technologies that would help safeguard our maritime sovereignty, for example by preventing illicit activities such as drug trafficking or illegal fishing. Only two will be the winners and will receive USD 90,000 (in total).
We’re on the final stretch! On Tuesday, March 30, the awards ceremony for Avante 2020 will take place. It is the first open innovation challenge of the Chilean Navy, developed together with Know Hub Chile and AthenaLab. The call sought technology solutions to problems related to Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA), which essentially means helping the Navy safeguard the country’s vast maritime territory: 26.5 million km2, or 1.5 times the whole of South America. To see the program and register for the awards ceremony, click here.
The technologies taking part in Avante, for example, help detect vessels engaged in illicit activities such as drug trafficking (about 30 times more drugs are moved by sea than are seized from air traffic) or illegal fishing. To see all the challenges, click here.
That is why the technologies taking part in Avante make it possible to detect, prevent and/or gather evidence of these activities, using artificial intelligence, drone swarms, or acoustic “fingerprints” of small vessels that take advantage of the small, remote coves along the nearly one thousand kilometers of “blind zone” on our northern coast (with no internet, cell phone or radio signal).
But the challenge is even greater: the technologies taking part in Avante must be dual-use, that is, serve both the defense and civilian worlds, broadening their market horizons. That is why the nine competing teams have spent 10 weeks in intensive training in Know Hub Chile’s Dual Tech Program, which is based on the iCorps methodology (developed by the U.S. National Science Foundation) as well as on Hacking for Defense, H4D (sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense).
The main goal is for the teams to get to know their customers (customer discovery). To do so, they conducted more than 300 interviews with companies and with their potential users within the Navy, such as the Directorate of Maritime Security and Operations (Dirsomar) and the Directorate of Maritime Interests and Aquatic Environment (Dirinmar).
They did not walk this path alone: the nine teams (46 participants in total) were supported by seven mentors: John Atkinson, Darío Canut de Bon, Jorge Karadima, Sebastián Melin, Darío Morales, Carla Muttoni and Germán Rehren. They were also guided by two experts from the Chilean Navy (Armada de Chile) and six from Know Hub Chile, who also taught most of the classes, covering topics such as business models and funding. In total, the teams received 135 hours of dedicated mentoring.
With the USD 7,500 they received for being selected and the knowledge they gained during the Know Hub Dual Tech program, the teams are developing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) of their technologies. The two winners, to be announced on Tuesday, March 30, will take home the top prizes: USD 50,000 for first place and USD 40,000 for second. On the morning of that day, the nine teams will present their pitches to an expert jury (to register, click here). The Awards Ceremony for the first edition of Desafío Avante will begin at 2:30 p.m. To see the program and register, click here.
Which dual-use technologies are taking part in Avante? Click here
