Can these new ideas make Miami’s airport a better place? County leaders are banking on it

One startup company wants to make sure you don’t get lost in a crowded airport.

Another uses artificial intelligence to convert airport announcements into sign language video, a sort of Google Translate for people who are deaf or hard of hearing and trying to catch a flight.

A third offers “turn-by-turn” instructions on travelers’ phones, guiding them through the maze of terminals and gates.

This past week in MIA’s Terminal D departure area, they all got their moment in the sun as winners of Miami-Dade County’s second innovation challenge .

“We’re scanning the world for innovation,” said Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.

One of the three companies is based in Miami, and the others are from Canada and the United Kingdom. More than 136 companies applied for the program, representing 27 countries. Diplomats from Tapei, France, Guatemala and Spain, among others, attended Thursday’s airport event.

The winning entries all offer technology that could make it easier to travel through Miami International Airport or improve customer service. The companies started testing the tools the week of Aug. 5 and each is expected to roll out to the public by the weekend of Aug. 24-25. Travelers who want to try them out can look for QR code signs at TSA checkpoints.

Each firm will get about $100,000 — from a mix of public and private funds — as well as support to pilot their innovations at MIA.

In exchange for the capital, the Miami-Dade Innovation Authority, the group leading the innovation challenge, has the right to buy shares in each company in the future at a predetermined price.

The three winning companies demonstrated the technology on Thursday at the Miami airport in front of several county VIPs in addition to the mayor: airport CEO Ralph Cutié, Chief Innovation & Economic Development Officer Francesca de Quesada Covey and Innovation Authority CEO Leigh-Ann A. Buchanan.

The mayor tested some of the technology herself, walking the airport’s corridors, and even surprising some travelers by greeting them.

Winning tech companies

The three companies that won innovation funding:

▪ RouteMe uses artificial intelligence to allow passengers to navigate Miami International Airport with camera phones. It provides step-by-step assistance using audio, text and touch. Visually or hearing impaired can set their phones to vibrate, and there’s no need to download an app.

The objective is to expand accessibility and to “make it impossible to get lost” at an airport, said CEO, co-founder and Miami-native Dimas Lipiz. He previously worked at a software company that helped people with visual impairments walk.

People can also use it to preview their experience at MIA a day or week before their flights, useful for anxious travelers or those with some sort of post-trauma stress disorder, said Lipiz, who attended Christopher Columbus High School and whose first college experience was at Miami Dade College. His mother, who he described as one of those anxious travelers, was there on Thursday.

▪ Signapse uses artificial intelligence software to translate text or airport announcements into sign language video. Based in the United Kingdom and founded in 2022, the company has about 10 employees. Pierre Paul, North America Partnerships Strategist at Signapse, told the Miami Herald the company would gradually start hiring in Miami, looking for one to three data scientists who have experience with deaf communities.

▪ Mapsted provides digital mapping that allows travelers to find their way easier in airports. It provides turn-by-turn directions and a digital map, analytics and crowd management for airport workers to learn of high-traffic areas. It could also be useful for vendors to boost their sales opportunities.

It does not use traditional GPS, which it considers too broad, but gives travelers step-by-step directions. It also has accessibility tools that allow use by the visually and hearing impaired.

Param Nagpal, CEO of the Toronto-based company, said in an interview on Thursday that MIA is the first U.S. airport where they are rolling out their technology, which has been used in airports in Asia. Being selected by MIA “opens up a lot of potential opportunities” for the business, he said.

Innovation challenges in Miami-Dade

In the first initiative, the Miami-Dade Innovation Authority sought companies that looked for sustainable uses for sargassum seaweed , which regularly piles up and stinks up South Florida beaches and is expensive to be hauled away.

This year’s challenge focused on MIA , a huge airport already involved in tech innovation, and one of South Florida’s main economic engines, bringing in about $30 billion a year to the region.

The county accepted proposals from technology entrepreneurs in Miami and globally in December and January. The idea was to select at least three winning companies to improve the airport experience for passengers or workers.

Companies had to be developing solutions in one of three categories: accessibility, navigation, or sustainability. The first could include technologies that help travelers with reduced mobility or a range of disabilities, neurological conditions like autism, or mental health conditions like PTSD.

Navigation would be innovations allowing passengers to move around across the airport more smoothly. That could mean providing digital displays on people’s phones, virtual reality maps, chat, and instructions in multiple languages including sign language.

Sustainability could mean AI-enabled recycling solutions or automatic waste data collection.

Companies eligible to win needed to have a service or product ready to test, but with a need for some additional money to help get it over the last hurdles

How did the Miami-Dade Innovation Authority get started?

The county’s Innovation Authority is a nonprofit run as an independent entity , with collaboration from the county. It was launched in January 2023 by Mayor Levine Cava during her State of the County address and has $9 million in funding. The county, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and Citadel Founder and CEO Ken Griffin each contributed $3 million.

The objective is to improve the relationship between technology companies and local government. And to help entrepreneurs access large entities within the city or county tackle large local problems, and test and validate the technology. An ordinary entrepreneur, for instance, cannot always easily get in touch with a top-ranking airport or transit official in a large and often-daunting bureaucracy.

The initiative also seeks to lower the risk for private investment firms in backing early stage companies.

Trip to Israel

Levine Cava formed the idea to create the Innovation Authority after seeing something similar in Israel, where she visited on a trade mission in 2022 along with the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce.

“The Israeli Innovation Authority was the inspiration,” Buchanan, the Miami-Dade Innovation Authority’s chief, said in an interview last year with the Miami Herald.

Levine Cava was impressed by how it leveraged private and public capital to support early stage startups trying to solve big public problems, including climate change and urban mobility.

On Thursday, the mayor said the county effort was “based on the model that Israel uses to consolidate best technology practices and then apply them to public concerns.”

Levine Cava brought on Buchanan, a veteran venture capital investor and founding president of Aire Ventures, to head the effort. With the firm, Buchanan incubated the Tech Equity Miami initiative , which raised $10 million from JPMorgan Chase, an effort to level the funding playing field.