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It is the ranking of most promising young people in the global stage, and amongst the 10 Portuguese nominated this year are the founders of Smartex, the startup based in Barcelos that aims to end flaws in fabrics, thus saving the textile industry millions.
The list, compiled by the influential North-American magazine Forbes, underlines that the project, which is being developed by António Rocha, Gilberto Loureiro and Paulo Ribeiro, may play a role in making the textile industry more sustainable, by resorting to Artificial Intelligence (AI) in order to reduce flawed productions down to zero. Through a series of sensors, cameras and accelerometers, with computational vision systems and AI, it can detect flaws on the fabrics straight from the weaving phase.
At the beginning of last year the platform developed by the three young men had entered a hardware acceleration programme and received an investment of 221.1 thousand euro, while the technology was already being tested in the Rifertex and João António Lima Malhas factories, both in Barcelos.
The system detects all kinds of flaws in the fabric threads, even on spandex, and Smartex’s technology may also be applied to other stages of production as well, such as dyeing or printing.