The Middle East was in the house at this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC), one of the largest startup gatherings on the planet, showcasing intelligent technologies and human ingenuity that are transforming every business and every process. Sponsored by PC Magazine, and held February 26 through March 1 in Barcelona, MWC pop-up pavilions housed innovations from around the globe. Amidst the next-gen drones, self-driving cars, and artificial intelligence (AI) apps, we spotted two concepts conceived in Israeli and Jordan.
On a trip and feeling lost? Plug into White Raven‘s unique geo-visual database. It stores the visual information needed to identify landmarks at global-scale, providing visual reference to the recognition engine. The company is developing visual search engines for places, using cameras and cars. Their landmark recognition engine extracts the visual cues required to identify the landmarks in an image, and/or localize the photographer even under drastic variations in viewing angle, lighting, sensor type, and resolution. In short, their in-driving system takes a video stream from a moving camera as input, optionally accompanied by approximate location data, and identifies and localizes points-of-interest in real-time. To date, the product has achieved more than 93% accuracy in recognizing landmarks.
This innovative Israeli startup is completely redefining how you interact with smart vehicles, with computer vision underpinning a visual search engine that superimposes data on real-time car camera footage. White Raven does city-by-city indexing using public mapping data to train its AI model, which can then surface information such as addresses and navigation, commercial and tourism information, and even where a building starts and ends as your car passes it. Learn more at their website (link here), where you can also try a demo!
https://youtu.be/lmp0qShnXcg
White Raven is beginning to work on long-term proof-of-concepts with car makers to integrate its software into “infotainment” systems within the next few years, but in the meantime the startup is integrating with public transport screens in buses, taxis, and trains to surface real-time data superimposed on video feeds from the vehicles’ front and rear-facing cameras. It’s also building location-based augmented reality gaming services to keep passengers entertained.
Once you’ve identified the world around you, perhaps your next step is to make it a better place. Then check out Jordanian start-up JoodLife, an app and social platform for donors and volunteers. JoodLife’s interactive platform aims to save time and effort in coordinating nonprofit efforts by helping users share materials, organize roles, and build grant proposals.
Joodlife links donors and volunteers to recipients and social organizations via an interactive platform that saves time and effort, and also aims to increase the levels of social solidarity. Do you want to see equality in society? Do you want to take part in changing lives for the better? Joodlife enables you to be smarter with your generosity.
The app displays all opportunities within a given a geographic area. Users can communicate directly with thousands of recipients, arranging specific times to meet up and further coordinate.
Learn more about this project (link here), and perhaps be inspired to follow their corporate mission: Be generous with Joodlife.
Author: Faisal O'Keefe
Former First World tax attorney, appalled at the trajectory of world politics and public attitudes, and how his favorite vacation spots are being decimated by climate change and human disregard for nature. Took a six-month leave to consider his options. Seven years on, is still trying to figure out what to be when he grows up, and what actions he can take to best ensure he'll have a place to be it.
