The Seed Fund team is delighted to announce the winner of the 2013 Spring Round: HACHID. The team includes three researchers and a faculty member: Jens Schneider, Bernard Ghanem, Mohamed Shalaby, and Basim Zafar.
HACHID is a highly accurate and self-sufficient computational system (hardware and software) that enables real-time human counting and tracking in high-density crowds. Accurate counting/tracking of high-density crowds is necessary for monitoring, controlling and simulating crowds that arise in places such as the Grand Mosque and pedestrian tunnels in Makkah during the Hajj and Umrah seasons, and as well as in various environments such as airports, stadiums, and malls where estimating crowd flow is imperative for security and marketing analysis. This novel solution will provide more accurate results than current counting solutions available in the market. In addition, it will be easy to install and self-sufficient for local processing. This winning team will be provided advisory support and capital funding for up to two years.
The Seed Fund team would like to thank all the applicants and look forward to seeing HACHID to develop product, establish a business, and go to market soon.
The Seed Fund is a product development funding mechanism that can help move promising ideas further toward commercialization, and ultimately lead to the formation of a new business. The Seed Fund team continues to work with our scientists, inventors, and entrepreneurs and encourage all to apply for future seed funding. The next round will be open at the end of August 2013. For more information visit the Seed Fund website or email: seedfund@kaust.edu.sa