Empowering Convenience Through Autonomous Cameras
On May 7th, 2016, Joshua Brown, became the first ever casualty, in an autonomous car accident. The cameras on his Tesla did not see a white trailer truck. He was driving at about 70mph, on a sunny Florida day. A white trailer truck was coming in the opposite direction, and against the glint of the sunlight the cameras couldn’t see very clearly. About two years back after that accident, autonomous cars and their problems went from being science fiction to dinner table conversations.
Not only autonomous cars, but there are whole range of applications moving towards autonomy. We have smart cities, automated inspection systems, smart surveillance and smart borders and soldiers.
The underlying theme about autonomy is mainly about providing better safety and empowering convenience. What really help makes it big is cameras and imaging systems.
Tonbo Imaging, an imaging company chose to innovate in a method where a camera could have a brain and interpret the environment, understand what is happening around the environment, and communicate with other cameras, to create an ad-hoc network.
“The camera has evolved in form and fit, but it has not changed in its underlying concept. As humans we have two eyes, which give a sense of depth and allow you to see the world in 3D. But we took inspiration from dragonflies, which have 40,000 eyes and decided to build cameras with multiple apertures,” says Arvind Lakshmikumar, Founder & CEO, Tonbo Imaging
In today’s times, a variety of applications are present that can use autonomy such as defense, industrial automation, and autonomous vehicles. Defense has the same analogy of a camera. Cameras have not changed for 200 years, and defense has not changed for 100 years. Therefore, the underlying principle of how people built defense companies has been the same.
“Our objective has been to build a defense industry, not build a product or a feature, and we wanted to build a platform, that will allow other people to build systems over and above it. We are glad to have the backing of entities like the Marico Innovation Foundation which aid in a wider visibility,” adds Arvind, winner at Marico Innovation Foundation Awards 2018.
Based on fundamental camera technology the company has built a range of products for the defense industry. They have been deployed in over 25 countries and the systems have been recognised for their sophistication and rigor.
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