VIDEO: NVIDIA And Komatsu Partner on AI-Based Intelligent Equipment For Improved Safety And Efficiency
NVIDIA And Komatsu Partner on AI-Based Intelligent Equipment For Improved Safety And Efficiency
Kevin Krewell , Contributor
We expect many industries to find applications for machine learning as the technology becomes more pervasive and more accessible. This includes such heavy machinery industries such as construction and mining. As an example of this development, NVIDIA and Komatsu, Ltd. announced plans for Komatsu to integrate NVIDIA’s cloud-to-edge technologies into Komatsu heavy equipment and site management services for improved safety and efficiency.
NVIDIA and Komatsu use AI to monitor construction sites and equipment
Komatsu, a leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, will integrate the NVIDIA Jetson AI computing platform into heavy machinery used in excavation, drilling, loading, mining, etc. The combination of surround cameras and real-time video analytics will allow the equipment to operate with greater safety and efficiency. Within the construction industry there are 10K injuries each year in the U.S. that are associated with vehicles and machinery. More intelligence can reduce those injuries by adding full surround vision to the heavy equipment and deep learning-based AI should be able to track people and anticipate the movements of the equipment to avoid dangerous interactions.
The other goal of more intelligent heavy equipment and site management is better operational efficiency. It’s been shown that some construction sites have up to 50% of their machinery lying idle – large machine coordination is not easy. Machine intelligence can use the machine sensor data and site photogrammetry, including drone videos, to map the site in 3D and track the progress of the work and compare its conformance to the plan. Cloud AI can process the vision data and create an analytic model of the progress.
There will likely be multiple Jetson platforms on each piece of heavy equipment. In addition to the surround camera view, Komatsu will use Jetson for cab-mounted stereo cameras to help assess site conditions in real time and rely on AI to give the operator additional warnings and instructions.
NVIDIA offers the Jetson AI at the edge platform for drones and all autonomous machines. The advantage of NVIDIA’s platform is that it offers a software ecosystem that scales from supercomputers to drones. NVIDIA scalable platforms from Jetson at the edge to DGX in the cloud use the same GPU architecture, running the same software.
For job site management, Komatsu can use NVIDIA cloud AI along with photogrammetry of the job site to assist vehicle coordination and can help avoid collisions and find inefficient vehicle use. The DGX AI server can be used for post processing of the data for tracking to plan conformance and eventually to planning suggestions.
The Jetson platform will take training designed to recognize people and heavy equipment and use it for real-time inference on the job sites. Komatsu and its partners will be responsible for the training and deployment of neural networks on Jetsons. They chose NVIDIA because of the company’s wide range of solutions for vehicles, drones, and data centers.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tiriasresearch/2017/12/12/nvidia-and-komatsu-partner-on-ai-based-intelligent-equipment/#2cc93217665b
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