Ability puts intelligence on the edge, touts AI potential in Asia

The Industrial Development Bureau (IDB) under Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs is in charge of national industrial development tasks, providing all-round services for Taiwan’s various industrial segments. It is committed to leading Taiwan’s industrial innovation, upgrading and transformation, with the goal of helping industrial players to improve productivity and international competitiveness.
 
With AI becoming a key trend, IDB seeks to help industries transform and overcome their challenges and pain points with AI. To achieve that, IDB introduced a dual development model that combines top-down (theme-based) and bottom-up (needs-based) approaches. The model links industry associations and identifies companies with AI technology to explore fields and industries in need of AI applications. Through guidance and subsidy programs, the project promotes empirical cases of AI.  
 
Such mechanism has resulted in many successful Taiwan companies specializing in AI, which has gotten more inquiries among users of security and IoT. In particular, it has big growth potential in Asia, especially in smart transportation applications. In this regard, Taiwan-based Ability has the technology that meets user needs. The company will introduce their AI solutions and use cases in an upcoming webinar organized by IDB and the Institute for Information Industry.
 

Computing on the edge

 
Ability is a leader in the design and manufacturing of optical, mechanical and electrical integration devices. Products range from webcam and digital still cameras to IP cameras. Sensing the edge processing trend early on, the company is a pioneer in making edge AI devices.
 
Ability AI cameras boast various advantages over conventional cameras. AI cameras are essentially software-defined cameras, offering functions and applications defined by the software. The cameras use the Intel® Distribution of OpenVINO™ Toolkit to facilitate development and shorten time-to-market.
 

Key verticals that can benefit

 
Ability’s edge AI cameras can benefit end users in a variety of verticals. Due to their edge processing capability, AI cameras help to optimize bandwidth usage as well as quicken incident response time. These features make AI cameras particular suitable for certain segments.
 
Retailers, for example, can be well-served by Ability’s edge AI devices. Modern physical retailers are constantly facing competition from their retail counterparts. As such they are looking for ways to reduce cost, increase business intelligence and improve user experience. AI cameras can well-serve these purposes. They reduce the need for expensive servers/computers to run the analytics. They can also support analytics such as people counting, demographics analysis and dwell time to help retailers optimize stores.
 
Transportation authorities can also benefit from Ability’s AI cameras. Cities are constantly seeking to reduce congestion and automate enforcement. In this regard, Ability AI cameras, equipped with cutting-edge sensors, image processing technologies, can be further empowered by analytics such as object detection, vehicle-type detection and license plate recognition. These analytics help the cameras perform critical tasks such as vehicle classification, wait time calculation and illegal maneuver detection, thus helping authorities with congestion relief, enforcement and future planning purposes.
 

Outlook bright for APAC

 
In particular, Ability believes AI has strong growth potential in APAC. “Customers in the Asia-Pacific region have high expectations for AI applications, with the acceptance rate being considerably high, signifying that most stakeholders are open to AI applications,” said Jonny Wu, Director of Imaging System Business Unit at Ability Enterprise.
 
Specifically, certain APAC markets are seeing increasing inquiries for AI in smart city transportation applications. “Based on our knowledge and observation, the development potential of smart AI transportation applications is considerably high in Asia. Many governments actively promote smart transportation with large-scale hardware/infrastructure building in urban areas. Clients are also willing to introduce new AI technologies into market applications,” Wu said. “For example, in emerging countries such as Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia, smart transportation is a market with high demand for applications including plate number recognition, vehicle categorization and statistics, traffic flow analysis, smart parking, smart traffic signal management (to shorten travel time). Through local SI/AI software developers, governments use AI mainly to solve problems which would require a lot of manpower in the past, such as enforcing laws against traffic violations, traffic flow analysis and control.”
 

From APAC to Maxico

 
Outside Asia, Ability edge AI cameras have use cases too. One particularly interesting case study is Ability’s collaboration with VSBLTY to provide retail and smart city solutions in Mexico City. Ability’s cameras in conjunction with VSBLTY’s AI-driven Vector software provide retailers with enhanced customer engagement and audience measurement, including people counts, audience demographics, dwell time and density. Among the smart city solutions provided by the collaboration are license plate recognition, vehicle count (make and model), gait analysis, parking enforcement, and detection of masks, strangers, weapons, fires and car accidents.
 

Optimism AI will flourish

 
In the end, Wu expressed optimism AI will become more popular and widespread when certain challenges are overcome.
 
“At present, the market has accepted gradually that AI solutions can bring convenience to users and solve problems in a more accurate manner. However, current products/solutions still cannot be applied in large numbers or in many different scenarios. The reason, we believe, is that the service conditions in the market are not mature enough yet; in other words, SIs and users in the market still need to be educated on the topic of proper application of AI in different scenarios,” Wu said. “When most SIs and users have ample knowledge about this, we are optimistic that the AI market will flourish.”
 
Indeed, the APAC market is ripe for further AI adoption. To explore more about AI’s potential in Asia, Industrial Development Bureau (IDB) and III will jointly hold a webinar, “Result-focused AI: Examples from the Field,” on June 30 at 3 p.m., where Ability’s Wu will give a feature presentation: “Edge AI camera application for smart traffic and parking lots.” To register, click here.
                                                                        

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