Nordic Critical App Challenge by Airbus: a step towards the future of mission-critical applications

At the end of September, eleven professional application developer companies, primarily from Nordic countries, got together in Stockholm to demonstrate their creations for Airbus’s Tactilon Dabat device. This was the 5th edition of the Critical App Challenge, which has already taken place in Germany, Belgium, Hungary, and the Middle East and North Africa region in order to give local innovative companies from these regions the chance to demonstrate their solutions for public safety and mission-critical use.

This one-day event event in the Swedish capital allowed the companies to present their applications to a jury of seven customers and Tactilon Dabat end-users from various industries and scopes of use. The innovative aspect, as well as the user experience on behalf of public-safety and mission critical professionals, were key evaluation criteria. In short, the participants had to take into account the use of IoT, data analytics, and artificial intelligence in order to propose unique ways to retrieve data, as well as the means of processing and exploiting that same data.

“I am extremely satisfied with the outcome of this new Nordic-oriented edition,” explains Rahim Zaknoun, Head of Developer Ecosystem for Secure Land Communications at Airbus. “This concept is a unique way to show our customers that we are actively listening to their needs and are also proposing tailored applications and solutions which take into account technological advances, as well as current and future specific requirements, while finding means to optimise daily missions and tasks for all end users, regardless of which industry they work in. Whether it be in public safety, law enforcement, transport, utility and industry, and even healthcare, amongst others.” Zaknoun adds.

The prize winners, selected as the best existing solutions suitable for the Tactilon Dabat presented state-of-the-art mission-critical solutions. The top three were: Mesensei with a decentralised platform for private social media communication and decentralised data ownership, Dottli a communication solution which collects and shares data on each end-user by using sensors, and Ansur, a secure application which aims to reduce emergency response time for mission-critical interventions by proposing an option that handles visual situational awareness data by processing high-resolution – and even 4K – imagery.

All companies have received invitations to participate in two large events in November: Rakel Day, a major Swedish customer event which will take place on the 12th of November, and Slush; the world’s leading start-up event in Finland, from the 21st to the 23rd of November, at the Airbus stand. This will give them a unique chance to demonstrate their apps to both Airbus and end-users alike.

The Airbus Tactilon Dabat hybrid terminal offers both Tetra and LTE radio technologies in one single device. Tactilon Agnet 800 is an app for smart devices such as the Tactilon Dabat. It makes it possible to use features such as push-to-talk, status notifications, text messaging, and emergency calls on the Tactilon Dabat. Group communication with other professional radio carriers or the control room is also possible.

End-users of Airbus’s Tactilon Dabat can already take advantage of an array of professional applications available in the Airbus SmarTWISP catalogue, which offer features such as biometric, licence plate recognition and geo-positioning. In addition to the possibility of installing such applications on the device, Airbus’s very own Tactilon Agnet solution is also available on the device to allow users to share voice, data, image and video information with other individuals or a group of individuals in a secure and reliable way.