A success for SMEs as OBC takes home the ‘Product of the Year’ award for their AIVR software.
The 2023 Spotlight Rail awards were held this week, with the inaugural event hosted at the Royal Lancaster Hotel in London on the 13th of April. Companies from across the broad UK Rail spectrum gathered to hear the would be celebrating success, with shortlisted nominees including TOCs Transport for Wales, FOCs, contractors, and SMEs, honouring the best in rail throughout the year.
One Big Circle were shortlisted within the ‘Product of the Year’ and ‘Best Use of Technology’ categories, in recognition of their innovative AIVR (Automated Intelligent Video Review) system and the advancement of the technology’s use throughout the UK network this past year. The SME entered against sizeable competition, with fellow finalists for these categories including Network Rail, Hitachi, Kier Infrastructure, and MTR Elizabeth Line, and were one of the smaller organisations in attendance to be named finalists. As the eleventh announcement of the night, the OBC team took home the ‘Product of the Year’ award for the AIVR product suite. One Big Circle Co-Founder Emily Kent shared her gratitude for the openness of the rail sector, attesting how a collaborative approach to new technology has underlined growing adoption of the AIVR software across the wider rail supply chain and throughout the Network Rail framework.
“To be acknowledged as an SME in a room full of industry-leading organisations is wonderful recognition of the work our team and collaborating partners have put into building AIVR’ says Emily Kent, co-founder of One Big Circle: ‘Success for AIVR means more integration and collaboration – bringing together the data that people need when and where they need it, and being open about how that can be accessed, analysed, and shared appropriately.”
The winning entry provided an overview of the iterative development of the AIVR system, from initial cab-mounted device trials in collaboration with Transport for Wales in 2019, through to the SME’s recent ‘First of a Kind’ winning project which targets resilience of Overhead Line Equipment (OLE) against changing weather events. The project involved development work employing Machine Learning techniques to automatically detect Balance Weights in AIVR imagery to enable remote and automated monitoring, whilst also integrating AI and AIVR data to automatically detect and report high-risk Corona Discharge incidents across electrified lines – you can read more about OBC’s FOAK project here. The judging process required a short presentation outlining the submitted product as part of Spotlight Rail’s Shortlisted Webinars, where Emily shared further insight with webinar attendees covering AIVR’s key functionalities and innovation projects, responding to the question “How do we best use technology to adapt to the evolving rail industry and deliver for passengers?”.
The team have been no stranger to the rail award circuit this year, receiving a Highly Commended position for their Low-Adhesion Monitoring project and the ‘Innovation of the Year’ award at the 2023 Rail Business Awards in March. One Big Circle has also received a shortlist position for the ‘AI/Machine Learning’ category at the 2023 national Go:Tech awards in June.