Spotted: According to the UN, the Earth's population will likely reach 8.5 billion by 2030. At the same time, climate change is going to make it more difficult to grow food, requiring a rapid and collaborative approach to the global food industry. For startup, The Live Green Company, the answer can be found in plants. The company has developed a way to use biotechnology and machine learning to replace animal, synthetic, and ultra-processed foods with precise plant-based alternatives. Live Green's platform, dubbed Charaka, uses machine learning to analyse data about thousands of plants and find appropriate plant substitutes for animal-based and artificial ingredients.

Spotted: Every year we dump a colossal 2.12 billion tonnes of waste. And if we filled trucks with this rubbish, there would be vans to go around the globe 24 times. Although our rubbish clearly isn't stored just in trucks, do we know where it actually goes? Edinburgh-based data analytics firm Topolytics is looking for answers with its data aggregation and analytics platform that aims to make the world's waste visible, verifiable, and valuable. The platform, called WasteMap, collects and analyses data about waste types, amounts, and movements to create insights for waste producers, investors, and governments across numerous sites, regions, and countries.

Spotted: Through AI technology, the wine storage wall works as an intelligent unit that gives serving suggestions as a sommelier would, helping the owner to organise and maintain their wine collection. A high-speed 8-axis robotic arm aids this, and is programmed to apply minimal pressure in order to protect the bottle which it recognises, loads, scans and dispenses. Three cameras track the movement of the arm from the moment it selects the bottle, to the dispensing, all of which takes 15 seconds. Other facets of the wine wall include facial recognition software, which helps to give and withhold access to either the whole collection or even single, special bottles. Motion sensors are also able to detect unusual movement around the wine, for extra security.

Spotted: The self-described "machine health" startup Augury has developed a predictive maintenance platform that uses artificial intelligence to analyse machines for mechanical errors. The idea is that readings and patterns embedded within the noise from motors, compressors, pumps, industrial-scale heaters, etc., can be used to detect a problem. Augury's sensors record the readings and process the vibrations, temperatures and magnetism metrics of the machines, before uploading them to the cloud to be analysed by AI algorithms, which are generated by baseline readings in the cloud backend. The system gradually begins to recognise abnormal sounds and faulty movements and the machines analysed are then compared to similar appliances on the cloud, relieving the need to retrain models. The technology can be scaled up, and the company has expanded from analysing pumps, fans and chillers, to noncritical machines.

Spotted: Eddy Travels is an AI-enabled personal travel assistant that operates within popular chat applications, such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Viber, Slack and Telegram. Based on the user's chat conversations, Eddy uses a language processing system that makes tailored travel recommendations. This enables to unify all booking needs to one place, from flights to hotels. Eddy even recommends personalized activities. For example, if your friend mentions taking a trip to Tanzania, Eddy could recommend a safe area to stay in, accommodation, the best travel insurance, tours, etc.

Spotted: Eddy Travels is an AI-enabled personal travel assistant that operates within popular chat applications, such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Viber, Slack and Telegram. Based on the user's chat conversations, Eddy uses a language processing system that makes tailored travel recommendations. This enables to unify all booking needs to one place, from flights to hotels. Eddy even recommends personalized activities. For example, if your friend mentions taking a trip to Tanzania, Eddy could recommend a safe area to stay in, accommodation, the best travel insurance, tours, etc.

Spotted: Vienna has installed around 200 pedestrian crossing lights that can recognise when a person wants to cross the road. The system was commissioned by Municipal Department 33 of the City of Vienna and developed by a team at the Institute of Computer Graphics and Vision at TU Graz University. It is intended to replace the push-button system, and can adapt to give large groups and people with disabilities more time to cross. The system uses cameras mounted on the traffic light that have a large visual field. The research team used global movement models and recorded data to develop learning algorithms, which recognise when a pedestrian wants to cross the street.

New bots are constantly being launched and we have covered a fair few, from this chatbot chef which plans meals for users via emoji, to a messenger bot that helps out in emergency situations. New innovation, Wonder, is designed to help users store and recall the information they need from their gym locker password, their insurance provider, right through to the type of ink cartridges their printer uses. Customers first enter their phone number on Wonder's website. They then text Wonder the information they want to remember at a later date. The app stores that information, and when the customer is trying to recall the details, they can ask Wonder directly via text message: "When's the next company meeting?"