Mayor Cava, alongside county officials and leaders from Miami-Dade County’s Office of Innovation and Economic Development (OIED), Miami International Airport (MIA), and the Miami-Dade Innovation Authority (MDIA), announced the winners of MDIA’s second Public Innovation Challenge. This challenge prioritises customer service at MIA, showcasing innovative technologies and solutions designed to enhance the airport experience for both passengers and employees.
The showcase featured live demonstrations of the winning technology solutions that will participate in a test programme conducted at MIA over autumn 2024: RouteMe, which utilises artificial intelligence (AI) to enable a passenger to navigate MIA simply with their phone camera; Signapse (UK), which utilises Generative AI to deliver text to sign language translation, making digital signage accessible to deaf passengers at MIA; and Mapsted, which provides airport wayfinding mapping with accessibility features and integration to smart technology devices.
MDIA, working in collaboration with MIA and OIED, selected the Public Innovation Challenge winners from a pool of 136 local and global technology companies after the challenge’s launch in December 2023. MDIA will invest $100,000 in funding into each company to support testing its technology at MIA, with the aim to scale these solutions to airports globally afterwards. The test programmes will be conducted during the next three months with the option to extend each to as long as 12 months.
Launched in 2023 with seed funding from Miami-Dade County, The John S and James L Knight Foundation, and Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin, MDIA was founded with equal private, public, and philanthropic funding totalling $9m. The Public Innovation Challenge at MIA is the second of three challenges launched during MDIA’s first year of operations, including a collaboration with PortMiami to enhance cargo visibility.
