Irish start-up's AI tech heads for space on ESA Earth observation satellite

Dublin start-up Ubotica has brought its AI technology into orbit aboard a next-gen ESA satellite. Dublin-based Ubotica Technologies has announced that its AI tech has gone into orbit aboard the Earth observation satellite PhiSat-1, which was launched along with 52 other satellites on a European Space Agency (ESA) Vega rocket yesterday (3 September). The satellite is part of a programme funded by ESA and supported by Enterprise Ireland, in which deep-learning technology for the in-orbit processing of Earth observation data is being deployed on a European satellite for the first time. Ubotica's CVAI technology, built on the Intel Movidius Myriad 2 vision processing unit, will allow the satellite to make its own decisions rather than relying on humans down on the planet's surface, resulting in faster, more efficient applications being deployed on the satellite. In this instance, Ubotica's AI tech is being tasked with automatic cloud detection on images captured by the satellite's advanced hyperspectral sensor.