The Rise and Rise of Computer Vision Modelling
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Introduction
Computer vision is often referred to as the science of understanding digital images. Computer vision has a huge range of uses, from enabling autonomous vehicles to identifying how many red apples are in a pile. It’s revolutionising retail, manufacturing processes, compliance and healthcare, to name a few use areas of business, making life easier for everyone from consumers to manufacturers to healthcare providers.
In recent years, computer vision modelling has increased significantly providing use cases that we don’t even notice in our everyday life. It takes complicated visual data and turns it into insights that are crystal clear and practical, using computer vision software. It is being used, for example, to assist with minimising loss, increasing efficiency, reducing personnel expenses, and making the best business decisions by developing a deeper understanding of your environment.
The amount of data we produce today, which is subsequently utilised to train and improve computer vision, is one of the elements fostering the development of computer vision.
In this two-part blog, we will discuss why it is important you look at commercialised computer vision models, and discuss some of those available in a few of the vertical markets.
Commercially available and customised models are the way forward
What’s the difference between a commercial model and a non-commercial model? The main answer is simple – training. A non-commercial model tends to be trained on your data, whereas a commercial model can be trained on any data. This means that it has learned to identify objects in a more general way, rather than being limited to your specific application.
When you are using commercialised models, one of the advantages as a user is that it will come with an End-User License Agreement (EULA). As well as it being a legally binding contract that will protect IP for a provider, it can also protect customers by ensuring they are aware of any limitations on the use of your model.
The EULA will typically state:
- what data you get from their service;
- how long they retain that data;
- if there are any restrictions on the use of their services;
- what happens when your subscription expires or when you stop using those services;
- whether there are any conditions under which users’ access may be suspended or terminated (for example due to infringement);
Commercial models come with an assurance of professional training and contracting that provides adequate security for corporate usage. These trained models are validated prior to deployment and tested for accuracy after deployment; furthermore, they are deployed in controlled environments with access control policies applied at all times as well as monitored in real time against regulatory compliance needs such as GDPR requirements or PCI DSS requirements among others.
Types of models available
As mentioned at the beginning, the use cases are significant with many industry verticals now using computer vision commercial models. Below are a few that are examples of how it is used:
- Scaling and expediting retail fulfilment and delivery
- Optimisation of sales in Retail
- Loss Prevention – Retail
- Streamlining and improving manufacturing processes
- Compliance, for ensuring a specific process or requirement is being fulfilled
- Hospitality
- Gas Stations
- Healthcare
- Automotive
Let’s discuss a few of these.
Streamlining and improving manufacturing processes
Manufacturing process optimisation (MPO) is the practice of finding ways through which you can improve your manufacturing activities by reducing waste, increasing productivity and efficiency and ultimately improving your bottom line.
There are two types of MPO:
- Continuous optimisation – where you use computer vision software to monitor production lines 24/7/365.
- Discrete optimisation – where you use computer vision software when there’s an issue with a product or machine during production.
Healthcare
In healthcare, computer vision models are being used to improve the accuracy of medical imaging like CT scans, ultrasounds and X-Rays. These models can be used to detect disease and anomalies with high accuracy at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods.
Automotive
In automotive, computer vision models allow cars to automatically recognise obstacles and identify lane markings so they can self-drive safely on highways. This technology is also being used by autonomous vehicles for navigation purposes; it allows them to accurately detect other cars moving either towards or away from them on the road so that they can make decisions about how fast they need to travel in order to avoid collisions.
So, now let’s look at a few models available through a leading computer vision provider, EVERYANGLE. EVERYANGLE are a leading computer vision player with specialisms in Retail, Hospitality and Compliance.
EVERYANGLE in Retail
Retail is a constantly evolving sector where the customer experience is key. It is a sector where the physical stores still dominate the retail industry. Online retails are using more complicated data to measure client intakes, dwell time, purchase decisions etc. Companies like EVERYANGLE are providing brick-and-mortar shops access to the same analytical information, finally levelled the playing field so you can gain a competitive advantage. They are providing them with the deep analytics they need to:
- Maximise store performance combining data to show sales conversions and staff conversion rates
- Understanding the customer by providing advanced footfall analytics to identify customer trends
- Streamlining operations and enabling optimisation of use of resources and staff
- Enhanced loss provision be that in store or even in the warehouse/stock room
- Monetisation of data through measurement of marketing campaigns and the impact of footfall
- Ensuring compliance needs are met. This is becoming an ongoing challenge with new regulations popping up all the time. EVERYANGLE modelling is already deploying models to help organisations in this area.
EVERYANGLE in Hospitality
In a similar way to retail it is a fast-moving sector. The needs are similar to retail but different at the same time. as well as ensuring security is maximised through existing invested camera estates an organisation will be provided with all the tools necessary for a considerable advantage of end-to-end aggregated data. Meaningful insights from video analytics will help manage compliance, assess guest engagement and behaviour, increase operational effectiveness, and maximise labour resource and marketing budgets.
Most of the points above in retail apply to hospitality and modelling will be used to improve customer and guest engagement, as well as:
- Using real time data to identify customer experiences and time spent in hot spots
- Safeguarding and security in venues
- Ensuring spend of resources is aligned to optimise how the venue needs to be used
EVERYANGLE in Compliance
So far, we have discussed how computer vision is being used in specific industries. When it comes to compliance it is all about being very specific, you will tend to be looking at specific processes within specific use cases.
A great example of this is one of the recent models from EVERYANGLE that is already being successfully used by customers focused on labor code compliance in the USA. Not getting this right can leave a company open to potential litigation so getting this wrong is not an option. EVERYANGLE has created a model that has been commercialised and is actively deployed in some customers already. The model is ensuring that companies meet labour code compliance around rest period.
Conclusion
Computer vision is an important tool in the arsenal of any organisation that needs to process large volumes of images and action the insight. The commercialisation of computer vision models has enabled organisations to develop cost-effective solutions for their customers using industry best practices. The use of these models enables the delivery of optimised ROI by considering everything from optimisation of process, loss prevention and sales optimisation.
In summary, commercial computer vision models can be an excellent solution for a wide range of industries and use cases. They deliver data-driven insights at scale, with the ability to train on massive amounts of data. The cost-effectiveness of commercial models means they are easy to implement and deploy in your business. You should consider how these models could benefit your organisation today!
In the next part of this blog, we will consider models taking a more ‘one solution’ approach but with levels based on how complex your requirement is.