AmbiKit to Transforms eCommerce with AI-powered Pick and Place Robot

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July 30, 2021

AI-powered Pick and Place Robot — Image Credit: Ambi Robotics

Ambi Robotics, a pioneer in simulation to reality AI, has introduced AmbiKit, a multi-robot knitting solution that can identify and pick items from bulk storage. AmbiKit is aimed at transforming the fastest growing eCommerce supply chain: online subscription boxes with AI-powered pick and place robots. This new knitting robot system has a five-robot picking line that can augment the pick and place tasks.

The Emeryville, California-based company claims its new knitting robot system can work 10,000x faster than alternatives. AmbiKit is proficient in picking and packing millions of unique items into bags/boxes for online orders. The AI allows the robots to adapt to any hardware configuration and learn new grasping methods. When paired with their cloud-based nature, they can share the latest techniques across the entire population of AmbiKits (no customer data is shared).

“Retailers and global eCommerce brands are operating in a year-round ‘peak’ season. In order for high-growth brands to fulfill online orders, companies are deploying AI-powered robotic systems to increase resilience in the supply chain. AmbiKit can immediately improve efficiency by deploying into existing workflows and successfully pick and place millions of unique items from day one,” says Jim Liefer, CEO of Ambi Robotics.

Since its inception, the subscription eCommerce market has seen tremendous growth. This market was valued at $13.2 billion in 2018 and is expected to reach $478 billion by 2025. Consumers are demanding convenient, personalized product choices. Retailers can offer subscriptions, customized orders, and on-time deliveries at reduced operating costs with robotic knitting systems.

AmbiKit can work efficiently in the subscription box market and order personalization. Currently, it can sort up to 60 products per minute. AmbiKit alleviates the manual sorting processes in warehouses that cost millions of dollars annually due to human error, employee injury, and high employee turnover.

SAS Announces its Plans for Initial Public Offering (IPO)

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Dipayan Mitra

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July 30, 2021

Data management and analytics institute SAS announces its plans for initial public offering (IPO) in a recent press release. According to the press release, the company plans to go public by the year 2024.

SAS is now focusing on refining its financial reporting structure and further enhancing its artificial intelligence platform to prepare for its IPO. The company plans to conduct research and develop new and better artificial intelligence software for data management and analytics.

SAS now has enough market leadership and funds to back its decision of going public. Co-founder and CEO of SAS, Jim Goodnight, said, “By moving toward IPO readiness, we can open up new opportunities for SAS employees, customers, partners, and our community to participate in our success, ensuring the brightest possible future for all of us.”

He further mentioned that the company is on the right track of sustainable growth that has enabled SAS to gain the trust of its clients on its uniquely developed platform. “We have built a strong operational and financial foundation, setting us up for an even better future. Now, it’s time to prepare for this next chapter,” Goodnight added.

Last year the company continued its 45 year streak of profitability by generating a revenue of $3 billion and has noted a growth of 8.4% in the first half of 2021. Workplace ethics is something that the company takes very seriously, and it has been able to maintain its position as the pioneer of workplace culture in the world.

The company has successfully understood the need for data analytics software in pandemic times and has developed industry-leading solutions to meet the requirement.

Goodnight mentioned, “ As we chart our path toward an IPO, we will continue to invest in our brand and platform, prioritizing our core values and empowering customers to solve their most complex problems.”

Baidu Co-founder Predicts AI Technologies that will Change Society in the Next Decade

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Dipayan Mitra

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July 30, 2021

Baidu Co-founder Predicts Artificial Intelligence Technologies that will Change Society in the Next Decade

Robin Li Yanhong, the co-founder and CEO of Baidu, predicts eight artificial intelligence technologies that will shape the future of our society in the next decade.

He spoke about next-generation artificial intelligence technologies at the ABC summit 2021 held in Beijing on 29th July. Li believes that humankind would witness a quantitative and qualitative technological transformation in the coming years.

He mentioned technologies like machine translation, biological computing, autonomous driving vehicles, digital city operation, deep learning frameworks, artificial intelligence-powered chips, knowledge management systems, and intelligent personal assistants would play a vital role in this revolution.

“At present, the world is ushering in a new round of innovation. The intelligent economy with AI as the core driving force has become a new engine for economic development. With the industry and society being more and more aware of the true value of AI, AI technology has entered a period of rapid application after long-term investment and accumulation,” said Robin Li.

He further mentioned that cross language real time communication earlier portrayed in movies is now becoming a reality. Li’s company Baidu had earlier worked with the Chinese government to develop a 3D artificial intelligence training system that helped divers to train more precisely with motion capture and data analysis features.

Experts believe that new technologies will help people in every walk of life and will also boost economic development on a global scale. Baidu is also developing a cloud-based artificial intelligence chip named Kunlun 2 that will enter the mass production stage by the end of this year.

Chief Technology Officer of Baidu, Wang Haifeng, said, “We are in the best age of technological innovation and industrial development.” He also added that advanced technologies would bring both digital transformation and intelligent up-gradation to increase economic growth.

Insane AI Raises $873,000 in Seed Funding Round

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Dipayan Mitra

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July 30, 2021

Insane AI Raises $873,000 in Seed Funding Round

Fitness application developing startup Insane AI raised $873,000 in its seed funding round led by pi Ventures. Investors like Anupam Mittal, Sameer Pithawalla, Soumil Majumdarm, Karan Tanna, Arjun Jain, and Lets Venture participated in the funding round.

Insane AI is a Bengaluru-based tech startup that specializes in developing artificial intelligence-powered fitness applications to help customers achieve their fitness goals. The firm was founded in early 2021 by Anurag Mundhada, Jayesh Hannurkar, and Sourabh Agarwal.

The company also provides a mobile app that gives the users information and knowledge about artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science. The smartphone application is available for free download on Google Play Store.

Co-founder Anurag Mundhada said, “Mainstream fitness formats can become drab and don’t challenge or inspire people enough to really build a long-term habit of fitness. Our unique gamified workout format keeps users highly engaged and motivated to give their best during every session, allows them to monitor their progress, and keeps them committed to their fitness goals.”

The company noted a 50% increase in downloads after the COVID-19 pandemic as all the gyms and fitness centers are closed. The company’s platform integrates fitness and gaming services using machine learning and artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and computer vision to provide an immersive experience to the users.

The application tracks the user’s sleep routine, nutrition intake, mental health, and physical fitness to give exercise suggestions.

Shubham Sandeep of pi Ventures said, “Digital health and fitness has seen a rising demand amidst the pandemic and is already a multi-billion dollar industry. However, the at-home fitness experience is lacking, which is waiting to be disrupted by technological advances such as artificial intelligence, aurgmented reality, and computer vision.”

He further added that they have complete faith in Insane AI for developing solutions to reimagine the fitness industry.

Latest AI Model From IBM, Uncovers How Parkinson’s Disease Spreads in an Individual

By

Preetipadma K

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July 30, 2021

IBM AI for Parkinson's Disease, Michael J. Fox Foundation, Machine learning — Image Credit: Tectales

The Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF) and the research arm of IBM have developed an AI model that can group typical Parkinson’s disease (PD) symptom patterns. This AI model can accurately identify the progression of these symptoms in a patient, regardless of whether or not they are taking medications to mask those symptoms.

This means that in the future, doctors will be capable of utilizing AI to predict how their patients’ diseases will proceed, allowing them to manage their symptoms better. This was one of the primary goals the two organizations had set out to achieve from the start, according to the discovery results published in The Lancet Digital Health.

The human motor system uses a sequence of distinct movements to accomplish bodily activities, e.g., arm swinging when walking, running, or jogging. These movements and the transitions between them produce activity patterns that may be monitored and examined for indications of Parkinson’s disease. Researchers study the physical measurements obtained from Parkinson’s patients, which differ from those taken from non-patients, and the development in those differences over time indicates disease progression. But it was unknown why some people with Parkinson’s will have their disease turn more severe than others until the recent breakthrough by Big Blue.

Since July 2018, IBM Research and MJFF have been collaborating to see how machine learning may be used to assist physicians in better understanding the underlying biology of Parkinson’s disease, especially given how it proceeds so differently from person to person. This machine-learning algorithm evaluated data from patients over seven years and identified trends in their symptoms that were connected to neurodegeneration. Based on this insight, the team created an AI computer model that might help doctors anticipate how a patient’s condition would evolve, aiding them in giving the correct treatments at the right time or deciding who would benefit the most from a clinical trial. The researchers identified eight distinct states in Parkinson’s disease, each containing both motor and non-motor symptoms, and discovered that the disease might shift between them in no particular sequence over time. One of these states included severe cognitive impairment.

IBM stated that its aim is to use AI to help with patient management and clinical trial design. “These goals are important because, despite Parkinson’s prevalence, patients experience a unique variety of motor and non-motor symptoms,” the company added.

The Michael J. Fox Foundation’s Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative provided the data for this research. It is a clinical study originally started in 2010 in cooperation with more than 30 biotech, pharmaceutical, non-profit, and private firms. The study, which included over 1,400 patients from throughout the world, has gathered years of patient data from health records, wearable devices, and cellphones, as well as sequencing genomes and analyzing specimens obtained during their condition. According to IBM, this is the largest and most robust volume of longitudinal Parkinson’s patient data to date.

The findings were compared to those of a control group of 610 Parkinson’s disease patients from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke Parkinson’s Disease Biomarker Program (PDBP). This aided in the validation of the AI model that IBM researchers had been working on since mid-2018.

Gupshup Raises $240 Million in Additional Funding Round

By

Dipayan Mitra

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July 30, 2021

Gupshup Raises $240 Million in Additional Funding Round

Messaging service provider Gupshup raises $240 million in its additional funding round on Wednesday. Investors like Tiger Global, Fidelity Management, Think Investments, Malabar Investments, Harbor Spring Capitals, and White Oak participated in Gupshup’s series F funding round.

Earlier this year, the startup raised nearly $100 million. The fresh funding has increased Gupshup’s market valuation to $1.4 billion. The company plans to use the funding to expand its market reach and to develop its business messaging platform further.

Co-founder and CEO of Gupshup, Beerud Sheth, said, “Conversation is becoming a bigger part of doing business, and it has partly been driven by the pandemic. Second, we have always been the leader in this space, but the product innovation we have focused on in the last two to three years has worked in our favor.”

He further mentioned that new investors would provide crucial insights to the company for it to plan its future strategies. The startup is also planning to use a certain amount of funds for a share buyback for its loyal employees and investors.

Gupshup is a San Francisco-based company founded by Dr. Milind R Agarwal, Beerud Sheth, and Rakesh Mathur in 2004. The firm offers a conversational messaging platform to businesses to share short messages privately and publicly.

The platform delivers more than 4 billion messages every day and has sent a total of 150 billion messages till date. Sheth said, “There was still more investor interest, and the company wanted to build relationships with the public market investors. So, having a relationship with them now will help us in doing an IPO later.”

Company officials claim that they have witnessed a 60% increase in growth compared to the previous year. Investors firmly believe that the new funding will help the company’s team to scale up its operations and fill the product gaps in its portfolio.

US Firefighters Turn to AI for Fighting Wildfires

By

Osheen Jain

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July 30, 2021

Firefighters use AI to battle Wildfire — Image Source: CNN

Climate change is leading to intense and deadly wildfire seasons, stretching the firefighting resources to the limit. However, analytical tools like Suppression Difficulty Index (SDI) are helping firefighters to improve their chance of reducing wildfires by bringing machine learning and big data into the picture. Firefighters are turning to AI tools for building control lines and agendas.

For decades, fire managers have been relying on weather patterns and analytical data on fire behavior. Now, they are utilizing predictive technologies and artificial intelligence to plan wildfire management schedules and manage analytics of their terrain in real-time.

Researchers like Mr. Dunn hope their ML models and tools can ensure that the scarce fire resources are deployed as efficiently as possible. Firefighters are currently using Potential Operational Delineations (PODs), a popular tool that Mr. Dunn helped develop. PODs use advanced spatial analytics that allows teams to plan the location to take on wildfires even before they break out. The POD tool superimposes several statistical models like SDI over a map of a region. This aids fire managers in planning out their control lines and plans of attack in advance.

“You will never take the personal element out of fighting fires, but people make bad decisions under stress – they can’t crunch all this data on their own. This is about reducing the uncertainty, and helping firefighters make better decisions,” said Brad Pietruszka, who has been using analytical tools like PODs since 2017. He is a fire manager at San Juan, a 1.8-million-acre National Forest.

Another complex tool is the Potential Control Locations (PCLs) algorithm, which suggests where to build control lines during a fire. It considers information about ridges, flat grounds, fuel present in the ground, geography, distance from roads and public spaces, and samples it across historical fire perimeters.

Tools like SDI, PODs, PCLs, and others provide crucial information to firefighters during out-of-control wildfire seasons. As firefighters turn to AI to fight wildfires, researchers have stressed that these tools are efficient only when coupled with insights from people living in wildfire-prone areas.

Microsoft Acquires Artificial Intelligence Startup Suplari

By

Dipayan Mitra

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July 30, 2021

Tech giant Microsoft acquires artificial intelligence startup Suplari that specializes in developing solutions for corporate expenditure and cash flow analysis.

Suplari’s platform is also capable of predicting fund inflow and trend tracking. With this acquisition, Microsoft plans to integrate Suplari’s artificial intelligence-powered platform with its cloud-based Dynamic 365 solution.

The merger would help businesses to maximize financial visibility by analyzing current data and previous trend patterns from various data sources using artificial intelligence technology.

According to Microsoft, more than half of the businesses worldwide would use artificial intelligence cloud services for financial analysis needs by the year 2022.

Vice President of Dynamic 365 at Microsoft, Frank Weigel, said, “Together with Dynamics 365, the Suplari Spend Intelligence Cloud will help customers maximize financial visibility by using AI to automate the analysis of current data and historical patterns from multiple data sources. This acquisition will further empower Microsoft to help our customers turn data into actionable insight.”

He further added that this advancement would help enterprises to move beyond transactional financial management to artificial intelligence solutions that would enable them to make informed decisions, scrutinize risks, and reduce supplier costs.

Sulpari is a Seattle-based startup founded in the year 2016 by Nikesh Parekh that specializes in developing artificial intelligence solutions to allow businesses to make faster purchasing decisions using antiquated enterprise systems.

CEO of Sulpari, Nikesh Parekh, said, “We are excited for the new road ahead with Microsoft. I am ecstatic to report that 100pc of our team is continuing to work together to extend Suplari’s Spend Intelligence Cloud at Microsoft.”

He also mentioned that now the consumers can expect the company to develop better predictive and perspective insights generating platforms for the financial needs of various businesses.

Robotic AI Firm Covariant Raises $80M Series C

By

Osheen Jain

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July 30, 2021

Covariant raises $80M Series C — Image credit: Covariant

Covariant, a leading AI Robotics company, raised $40 million in Series B funding in May 2020. Just after a year, the Berkeley-based AI start-up, Covariant raises $80M Series C funding, bringing its total capitalization to $147 million within two years of the company coming out from stealth mode.

The Series C round was led by returning investor, Index Ventures, with the additional participation of Radical Ventures and Amplify Partners. Covariant also added Temasek and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) as new global investors with this latest round of funding.

“With Covariant rolling out multiple applications in warehouses across Europe, North America, and Asia-Pacific over the last year, it’s the first time that AI Robotics has been successful at this scale with such variability. Covariant consistently outperforms the competition in tests by prospective clients to benchmark autonomy in real-world operations,” said Mike Volpi of Index Ventures.

Covariant was founded in 2017 by OpenAI along with researchers from the University of California, Berkeley. Last year, they deployed Covariant Brain, which was described as “universal AI that enables robots to see, reason, and act autonomously in the real world.” It’s currently active in markets across Europe, Asia, and North America. Covariant has deployed its AI and robotics technology across various sectors from groceries, Industrial supply, pharmaceuticals, parcels, general merchandise, health, beauty, and fashion.

The company currently has under 80 employees, and part of the funding will grow the team globally. Covariant has added high-profile team players to its management for meeting challenges: Ally Lynch as head of Marketing, Raghavendra Prabhu as head of Engineering and Research, and Sam Cauthen as head of People. Meanwhile, parts of the $80 million funding will continue to be invested in AI Robotics research and development (R&D) and accelerate bringing AI into the physical world.

Intel Launches Free AI for All Initiative in Collaboration with CBSE and Ministry of Education

By

Dipayan Mitra

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July 30, 2021

Intel Launches AI for All Initiative in Collaboration with CBSE and Ministry of Education

Microchip manufacturing giant Intel launches its new free initiative ‘AI for All’ in collaboration with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and the Ministry of Education to teach individuals the basics of artificial intelligence in India.

It is a 4 hours self-paced program that anyone can attend for free. With this new initiative, Intel plans to educate more than 1 million individuals in a span of one year.

Director of APJ and Global Partnerships and Initiatives at Intel, Shweta Khurana, said, “Artificial Intelligence has the power to drive faster economic growth, address population-scale challenges and benefit the lives and livelihoods of people. The AI For All initiative based on Intel’s AI For Citizens program aims to make India AI-ready by building awareness and appreciation of AI among everyone.”

She further mentioned that this effort of Intel shows its willingness to work with the government of India towards making the country digitally empowered and unlock the full potential of artificial intelligence in India.

The free course is divided into two sections that would talk about artificial intelligence awareness and its applications, respectively. It would also focus on resolving common misconceptions people have regarding artificial intelligence.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced businesses to adopt a digital approach, which has accelerated the growth of artificial intelligence technologies in every industry. This course will help the citizens of India to understand the new normal in a better way and adapt accordingly.

Interested candidates can enroll themselves through the official website of CBSE.

In a recent event, the Prime Minister of India announced the launch of the AI for All initiative along with another program named ‘SAFAL.’ CBSE, in a statement, mentioned, “SAFAL will be conducted on a pilot basis in CBSE schools for students in Grades 3, 5, and 8 during the academic year 2021-22, in key curricular areas of Language, Mathematics, and EVS/Science.”