Ryesight: Award-winning computer vision system for the modern ‘smart factory’

With technology constantly pushing boundaries, terms like smart vehicles and smart TVs have now become a part of everyday vocabulary. In such a platform, Tech Blender Labs helped create smart factories through its latest product Ryesight – one of the first AI-based vision detection systems in Sri Lanka. The product was recently felicitated with the Merit Award under the Industrial Category at NBQSA 2021.

Further, the company also opened a new office in Colombo 6 and its growth is poised to continue. According to the latest data, Sri Lanka’s manufacturing sector contributes 16.36% of its GDP. In the past 18 months, the COVID-19 pandemic has made companies restructure and optimise their production lines. Hence, with social distancing protocols and travel restrictions, the need for smart factories in the country is evident for such businesses to not only grow but also survive in a post-pandemic world. 

Tech Blender Labs is an innovation lab and incubator space utilising technology to provide sustainable industrial and business solutions. The company was founded nearly two years ago with a team skilled in a combination of fields such as electronics, electrical and industrial engineering, software development, AI and Data Science, Marketing, and Entrepreneurship. Work ethic and customer satisfaction are at the pinnacle of all Tech Blender Labs operations. Together, the team shares a unified vision of seeing Sri Lanka for what it could be with a touch of out of the box thinking.

Ryesight is Tech Blender Labs latest industrial disrupter that leverages AI, Deep Learning, and other Industry 4.0 concepts. Being one of the 1st vision processing systems of its kind in Sri Lanka, object detection, identification, and tracking are made more efficient and precise with the integration of Ryesight into the production lines of factories. 

The system uses high-end robust hardware for data acquisition and cloud IoT for its image processing. Hence, the system can be used to detect defects and other irregularities with an efficiency of 99.9%. This significantly reduces the need for human visual inspection and cuts down on staff required per shift. As such, it is evident that Ryesight is a powerful tool any manufacturing company could leverage to optimise their production.

Ryesight was first implemented for the detection of coconuts on two high-speed conveyor belts at the manufacturing facility of one of Sri Lanka’s largest beverage companies. With Nvidia hardware and advanced backend AI algorithms in place, the system guarantees round-the-clock real-time tracking and efficiency in a rugged environment. In addition to this, automation scripts have been deployed to ensure that the system is stable, and will alert personnel in the case of bad system health. Thereby, providing a pragmatic solution to the issues brought forward by the client.

The state-of-the-art vision processing capabilities of Ryesight bring with it numerous potential applications. With the system, it is possible to track vehicles and their number plates in time-sensitive vehicular movement areas, such as highway tolls, car parks, and congested junctions. Be it for ticketing systems, traffic forecasting, or identifying traffic law offenders, the system is capable of video surveillance and the capture vehicle metadata. From there, search algorithms on the cloud IoT system may be used to efficiently look up vehicles from an on-board database.

When it comes to the food processing industry, packaging lines are often tampered with by manufacturing faults in the packaging container. Bottles, juice boxes, and cans that may cause leaking can be identified with the use of Ryesight through local GPU processors. Furthermore, defects such as fabric shadings, poor sewing, oil marks, and other stains may be identified and separated to enhance quality control in the apparel industry. In summary, any practical application where cracks, wear and tear, and other visual aspects that conventionally require human inspection may be revolutionised with the use of Ryesight. 

Being among the first of its kind in the Sri Lankan manufacturing space, TBL will be focused on equipping several other factories on the island with the benefits provided through Ryesight. Following this, the team conveys that they have also got the ball rolling in introducing the system to markets in other developing countries in Southeast Asia and Africa. 

The team at TBL is accelerating the growth of the fourth industrial era of automation in Sri Lanka. With developments such as Ryesight expected to gain enormous traction in local and overseas markets as the future of manufacturing essentials, TBL is well on its way to being the country’s spearhead with innovation for industrial solutions.