Aspire Food Group and DarwinAI awarded IRCAI Top 10 Outstanding Project for 2021

The International Research Center in Artificial Intelligence (IRCAI) has named the solution developed by Aspire Food Group and DarwinAI as one of the Top 10 Outstanding Projects leveraging AI to advance UN’s sustainability goals.

The IRCAI, which exists under the auspices of UNESCO, issued a call for solutions with global relevance last year, resulting in an overwhelming number of submissions. A list of the top 100 projects was chosen by programme committees and the organization’s editorial board, 10 of which were deemed ‘outstanding’ and will be highlighted at IRACI’s press conference in New York on February 14.

The Aspire/DarwinAI project – “Novel Application of Advanced Manufacturing Approaches to High Quality Protein” – was one of two outstanding solutions in North America. The other was submitted by NASA.

Aspire commercially produces and processes crickets into nutritional ingredients for people, pets, and plants. DarwinAI produces visual quality inspection solutions using their proprietary Explainable AI (XAI) technology for a wide range of global industries, including advanced manufacturing and industrial automation.

The DarwinAI solution combines automated visual inspection and XAI with IoT sensor data analysis to optimize yield and provide real-time insight into plant conditions and operations. The technology will debut at the opening of Aspire’s new commercial facility in London, Ont., later this year.

Aspire and DarwinAI thank Next Generation Manufacturing Canada (NGen) and Sustainable Development Technology Canada in facilitating their fruitful collaboration.

“A growing population and increasing demand for food and material requires sustainable, scalable solutions,” said Mohammed Ashour, CEO, Aspire. “We are honoured IRCAI saw the value in an AI solution, which will accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable ingredients and materials through insect technology.”

“Since day one, our mission has been to transform industries by instilling trust in AI,” added Sheldon Fernandez, CEO, DarwinAI. “This important distinction speaks to the breadth of Aspire’s vision and the transformative potential of artificial intelligence. It is a privilege to apply our technology to such a forward-looking initiative.”