Some of the participants while discussing during the workshop (Photo: FabSpace)

FabSpace Darmstadt kicked of the workshop on Tuesday, 6th of March, with the topic of Radar Remote sensing with the focus on Sentinel-1 radar satellite mission of Copernicus. The session was entitled as “SAR – Radar Image Processing for Application Development” by Dr. Bargiel. In this presentation Dr. Bargiel highlighted his recent research activities at TU Darmstadt and the potential of multi-temporal analysis of radar imagery for landscapes, crop classification and so on. This new way of how to think of radar imagery or maps for a whole region has a lot of hidden potential. For the attendees the results and explanations were just amazing and a great point to start thinking. Beside introducing this he also gave a very good overview of the concept and possibilities of the radar imagery and image processing technology. The feedback on this Keynote was outstanding and first ideas for new business were revealed just after minutes by the participants. “By seeing this, I can think about several business cases immediately”, says one of the workshop users. Therefore, in the end of the live presentation open discussion were carried out to explore the future possibilities of radar satellite Sentinel-1 imagery.

Dr. Damian Bargiel in discussion with participants (Photo: FabSpace)

The second day was all about “GNSS on the move” by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Matthias Becker. He showed the recent developments of satellite navigation and its influence on so many applications, especially smart mobility and smart city. On top of that he highlighted some of the projects within Digitalstadt Darmstadt strictly connected and often in the need of GNSS. He also mentioned the possibilities of the use of multi frequency or multi services to improve availability and accuracy of positioning services. Of course he also explained benefits, advantages and differences between the available GNSS services like GPS, Galileo and GLONAS. „The availability of low-cost dual-frequency Multi-GNSS chipsets opens a new age in stand-alone positioning for the mass market”, summarized Prof. Becker one of the results of his session. Like in the first session the audience created a few potential business applications right after his presentation in an elaborative open discussion.

Prof. Becker explains Potentials and Limitations for Smart Mobility (Foto: FabSpace)

The last session was all about Sentinel-2 the color vision of Copernicus, given by Bayzidul Islam. The keynote started with the brief introduction of the Sentinel-2 satellite and imagery. The presentation gave detailed information on the different level of available data provided by Sentinel-2 satellite, the technical details on the spectral bands, wavelengths, purposes and other image properties. The presentation also covered some use cases that developed by interplaying between visual, infrared and short wave bands. In the presentation Islam also told a story on how the Big Data generated by optical satellite Sentinel-2 imagery and other cutting age technologies like Machine Learning (ML), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) are correlated with each other. The presentation demonstrated how Machine Learning algorithms like Deep Learning can be used to process petabytes of optical imagery to develop digital applications. In another part it was shown how Artificial Intelligence can enhance the usability of satellite imagery to make a better world for the sustainable future. It was also shown how we can use optical satellite Sentinel-2 imagery to develop system of a system which is the concept of Internet of Things (IoT). At the end of the day there were also open discussion with all participants to get to know better on those geospatial technologies.

Bayzidul Islam explains potentials of Sentinel 2 data (Photo: FabSpace)

Finally, the S3 Workshop revealed a couple of interesting challenges that might be tackled in future FabSpace events. If you want to learn more about it, just get in contact with FabSpace 2.0 Darmstadt staffs. The team is also looking forward to the next S3 Workshop with a focus on other fields of application.

More photos can be found here.

]]> https://www.irit.fr/fabspace.eu/fabspace-2-0-darmstadt-get-to-know-the-finalists/ Thu, 08 Jun 2017 13:22:51 +0000 https://www.fabspace.eu/?p=1278 Crossing the target line of this year’s Image CLEF 2017 local event at FabSpace Darmstadt, Germany you have the chance to get to know our German finalist Rifat and Philipp. This year, FabSpace managed to get a sponsor for the winner’s trip to Dublin. Telespazio VEGA Deutschland will be sponsoring the German representative to attend the European Image CLEF 2017 event in September. The Darmstadt based aerospace company is one of the shareholders of cesah and was happy to become involved in our exciting competition. Watch the interview between the finalists and Alexandra Sokolowski from Telespazio VEGA and learn about their obstacles and major challenges during their work on the challenge which was to estimate population of an area of interest based on Sentinel-2 satellite imagery. They also talk about their background and different motivation. So next time it might be you! Step up and join the FabSpace network today.

Sascha Heising presented a conceptual introduction about FabSpace especially for this event. Following the concept of storytelling, Heising decided to show a use case about shark attacks in Reunion island to illustrate the process chain of FabSpace activity. The story indicated the start of curiosity about earth observation to the data and tools using in Open Innovation and ending at rapid prototype testing in both the physical and virtual FabSpace Lab. Mr. Heising also underlined that FabSpace will be the “First-Step” towards every journey of Make-Create-Innovate with earth observation.

In parallel, Bayzidul Islam promoted FabSpace at the corresponding exhibition booth in the main hall at ESOC. He also promoted the upcoming FabSpace “Startup Week” together with Software AG. In addition to that Dr. Damian Bargiel was also able to give a speech about FabSpace. After the event the FabSpace Darmstadt team received important feedback to strengthen the local FabSpace concept. The event also showed that “FabSpace” is nowadays a well-known term in the Darmstadt and the Rhein-Main space community, thanks a lot for the support given by the participants, ESA/ESOC and all other institutions.

Booth of FabSpace during the conference.

All images: (c) Ines Dombeck, 2017

from left: Sascha Heising, Matthias Simnacher, Dr. Frank Zimmermann and Hong Wa Poon at the current Innovation Center of Merck (image: FabSpace).

After presenting the scope and goals of FabSpace 2.0 both parties agreed to keep on the discussion and define concrete actions in the next few months.

photo: Deutsche Messe

CeBIT is a global event for digital business where FabSpace 2.0 Darmstadt spent 3 days and got a lot of new perspectives in the world of IT and digital business. At present the CeBIT is the biggest IT fair worldwide with about 200.000 visitors this year. This was the perfect place to be last week. FabSpace Darmstadt collected so many new impressions and ideas for upcoming events together with new contacts who will hopefully lead to cooperation in the future. This year in CeBIT the main buzz words IoT (Internet of Things), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). Therefore, FabSpace Managers Sascha Heising and Bayzidul Islam are thinking about a specialized FabSpace event in the following days bringing together IoT, AI and ML with Earth Observation (EO). “Currently we have the conceptual idea in our mind but we think we can announce the design of the event soon”, comments Bayzidul Islam on the ideation of FabSpace Darmstadt. “This would be our 3rd innovation event this year”, adds Sascha Heising considering the ImageCLEF event in April and the Startup week together with Software AG in June 2017.

See you in 2018 at the CeBIT Campus.

photo: Software AG

“Startup Week” kickoff at CeBIT 2017 was awe-inspiring for FabSpace Darmstadt which is going to be organized together with Software AG in the summer. FabSpace Darmstadt was honored to get the presence of the federal minister of economic and energy affairs, Mrs. Brigitte Zypries and the former astronaut Thomas Reiter in the announcement of the “Startup Week”.

Brigitte Zypries kicks off the FabSpace startup-week at the booth of Software AG during CeBIT 2017. photo: Software AG

The event was announced live on stage at the Software AG booth with a remarkable media coverage of more than 50 journalists and many more attendees from all over the world. The event started with a guest speech given by Mrs. Brigitte Zypries and continued with an impressive presentation by Thomas Reiter’s talk on his experience and the view from space on earth. Right after that Software AG arranged a panel discussion including also Mr. Karl-Heinz Streibich (CEO, Software AG), Mr. Lionel Born (CSO, Spacenus) and Mr. Sascha Heising (Project Leader, cesah GmbH contribution of FabSpace). The Panel discussion theme was “Space 4.0: From Space to Business” where all the experts were elaborating about the endless possibilities one can make, create and innovate with earth observation. Mr. Karl-Heinz Streibich underlined the activities of Software AG in the field of startup support and its startup program in cooperation with universities. Mr. Sascha Heising focused on the benefits of FabSpace which is a pre-incubation program and provides possibilities to be incubated in the ESA Business Incubation program as a continuation of FabSpace users. As a best practice FabSpace also introduced Mr. Lionel Born from Spacenus GmbH as a promising example of an earth observation and geospatial technology based startup.

from left: Thomas Reiter, Karl-Heinz Streibich (CEO Software AG), Sascha Heising (FabSpace) and Lionel Born (CSO Spacenus GmbH) together with moderator Byung-Hun Park introduce the startup week. photo: Software AG 

The current focus of the FabSpace Darmstadt is the upcoming “Startup Week” where participants will have the opportunity to win a “Trip to Silicon Valley” sponsored by Software AG. The detailed program will be published soon but registration is open and limited so interested should hurry up and REGISTER HERE.

For more information about the “Start-up Week” visit: startupweek.fabspace-germany.de

The FabSpace Darmstadt team was present during the entire night at the very exiting social media event for the launch of Sentinel-2B stellite. Mr. Sascha Heising and Mr. Bayzidul Islam talked about the project’s ongoing activities with the audience and presented some recent highlights at a small booth.

The whole event was a great success for European Space Agency – ESA and the entire Earth Observation – EO community. It has raised an amazing awareness and underlined the importance of the Copernicus program in every point of view. More than 300 guests attended during the event and cherish valuable talks from speakers. The social media community posted more than 17,000 twitter messages and approximately 21,000,000 people were reached worldwide. That was just an amazing broadcast by the the #Sentinel2Go team. Mr. Sascha Heising was interview live on stage in the night for an interview where he introduced FabSpace and invited everybody who is curious about earth observation technology to join FabSpace 2.0.

Fig: Mr. Sascha Heising was interviewed by ESA Social Media. (Image: ESA / R. Palmari)

Mr. Bayzidul Islam joined the social media community and talked about the prospects of satellite imagery produced by Sentinel-2A and 2B Satellites. He also introduced FabSpace 2.0 Darmstadt to the wider audience in the warmup session before sentinel-2B launched.

Fig: Mr. Bayzidul Islam was attending ESA social media event and guided tour inside ESOC (Image: ESA / R. Palmari)

After a long night the FabSpace Darmstadt team was excited how many people could join FabSpace after the event. And of course, it was great to have the Sentinel-2B satellite safely in its orbit with her sister satellite Sentinel-2A.