Founded in 2016, we use our FUTURE.LAB to conduct research on disruptive technologies and to test them for their practicability in industrial and commercial contexts.
Therefore, artificial intelligence and its potential applications always play a vital role for our research. Already today we use AI, for example, in text and speech recognition apps to automatically understand, analyze and categorize any text or speech input. To understand language, we use systems that have been trained on a vastly extensive text corpus with the help of machine learning. We are thus able to understand almost every word. One area where we apply this technology is in the simplification of user interaction in existing applications, for example our helpdesk, where addressing and fixing problems can be made far more efficient through automatic categorization and forwarding, but also through the integration of chatbots. Here, texts and information about the problem can not only be typed, but also spoken into the app. We are currently testing this process in our FUTURE.LAB using tickets provided to us by our clients from use cases. The goal here is to simplify the entire reporting process: in the future, the user will only need to type into a free-text field “what the problem is” and will no longer have to worry about categories or other classifications – the AI will take care of that.
Virtual and augmented reality applications also continue to be an important part of our research at FUTURE.LAB. For example, together with one of our clients from the mechanical engineering sector, we are currently researching how VR can be used to showcase complex production machines. Until now, our client had to arduously set up their machines on-site at various trade fairs in order to present them, which lead to extremely high costs both in terms of time and money. With our VR solutions, these machines can now not only be demonstrated much more conveniently and cost-efficiently – they can also be disassembled effortlessly into their components in VR to show how they work in detail.
We have reported on our augmented reality solutions in the past, with which we can, for example, superimpose additional virtual information from our digital twins onto complex technical installations in the real environment. This means that all necessary information such as user manuals, maintenance instructions, IoT data and much more is always immediately available on-site. In addition to this AR system, we developed a solution based on optical nameplate and text recognition that is independent of our digital twins, but at the same time offers similar benefits. AI methods were used here, as well, to recognize and read text off a nameplate on a photo taken by a smartphone or tablet. The text is then compared to the texts available in the linked database. If the databank contains information matching the corresponding nameplate, it is automatically provided to the user. This leads to considerable savings in terms of time and money, as the information no longer has to be searched for manually and strenuously but can be accessed within seconds by scanning the nameplate.
Click on the video below to see a short demo from our FUTURE.LAB regarding optical nameplate and text recognition. First, a photo of a nameplate is taken with a tablet, then the algorithm recognizes the text displayed on the nameplate and the unique ID number and automatically forwards the user to the corresponding IoT connection for the recognized pressure sensor:
Are you interested in a tour of our FUTURE.LAB or would you like to carry out your own research project with us? Then send us an email at info@speedikonfm.com to arrange an appointment.