The Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology (MoIAT) and EDGE Group have completed the first ‘Pioneers 4.0’ Hackathon series, as part of a series of initiatives to accelerate digital transformation.
The ‘Pioneers 4.0’ Hackathon series will host two challenges per year. Each challenge will have a unique problem statement that addresses industrial pain points to encourage digital transformation and operational excellence in various factories setups, and to enable participants to better predict and prepare for the industry’s needs and future requirements.
The inaugural challenge of ‘Pioneers 4.0’ took place from 21-22 November 2022 at the EDGE Learning & Innovation Factory in Abu Dhabi in partnership with Microsoft as a Technical Partner. It enabled 15 students from some of the UAE’s leading universities, including the American University of Sharjah, Higher College of Technology, Khalifa University, Mohammed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), New York University Abu Dhabi, Zayed University and the University of Manchester, to collaborate in teams and to propose an innovative solution for the chosen problem statement.
The challenge required participants to leverage data from sensors and manufacturing execution systems to develop a solution using artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to enhance predictive maintenance. It aimed to enhance maintenance threefold: firstly, to predict machine outages and unplanned downtimes; secondly, to predict energy consumption and anomalies in sensors during a manufacturing process; and thirdly, to analyse manufacturing data of the production line during production cycles, and to assess the quality of the manufacturing process with the current available data.
On the second day, 22 November, participating students pitched their solution to a jury of subject matter experts from MoIAT, EDGE, and Microsoft – in a bid to be crowned winners of the challenge.
The ‘Pioneers 4.0’ Hackathon is aligned with the UAE’s Industry 4.0 programme (I4.0), which aims to promote the adoption of advanced technologies in the industrial sector through various enablers and incentives. The Champions 4.0 Network, which is a group of leading national and international companies including the likes of EDGE and Microsoft, is a key pillar of I4.0. Under the network, companies explore collaborations and exchanges that lead to the acceleration of digital transformations and the adoption of 4IR solutions.
