Dear Φ-lab community,
This final quarter of 2023 has been pretty full-on, both for Φ-lab and ESA as a whole. The roaring success of the Earth Observation Commercialisation Forum at the end of October was followed by the Space Summit in Seville on 6-7 November, where crucial decisions on the future of EO in Europe were taken. November also saw the launch of MANTIS and Intuition-1, two EO satellites that have benefited from Φ-lab support. Intuition-1 demonstrates how Φ-lab and its partners are pushing the boundaries in onboard machine learning.
But at Φ-lab we are also expanding our horizons way beyond AI4EO by embracing other key technologies. For example, quantum computing (QC) is a major area of development for us. The ability of qubits to dramatically reduce computational costs compared with conventional processors is still a promising prospect that we are exploring, and when combined with AI, the scene is set for a veritable revolution in computing and problem solving. The convergence of QC and AI could be particularly beneficial for EO, where the need to classify and understand ever-increasing volumes of remote sensing data in real time will require a level of rapid machine assistance that is currently beyond our reach.
We are also investigating the potential for web3 to bring about significant disruptions in how EO data is stored, managed and valued. Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs), and more specifically blockchain, could provide the basis for geographically spread, traceable and secure storage systems, with enhanced monetisation capabilities of digital assets for the benefit of the commercial EO industry.
Lastly, foundation models like chatGPT and Gemini are also a great opportunity for Earth observation. We are increasing our efforts in this field after some exploratory work in recent months.
Watch this space in 2024 for more news on EO disruptive technologies.
The Φ-lab team
