BrainChip Gives the Edge to Search and Rescue Operations

BrainChip announced that it has partnered with ARQUIMEA on an AI-powered detection solution that enhances water safety.

ARQUIMEA has demonstrated BrainChip’s Akida with a Prophesee event-based Metavision camera on a low-power drone to detect distressed swimmers and surfers, helping lifeguards scale their services for large beach areas. The integration allows vision data to be processed directly by Akida without the need for conversion into traditional frame-based formats as required of conventional computer-vision algorithms.

“As dedicated and proficient as lifeguards are, there is no possible way for them to keep track of each and every beachgoer enjoying the ocean across miles of coastline,” said Miguel Lopez Estevez, Head of Robotics ARQUIMEA. “By demonstrating a system of drones with intelligence built in that can quickly and accurately identify people in the water who may be in distress, we aim to improve our search and rescue capabilities and proactively save lives that might otherwise have escaped detection.”

BrainChip’s Akida mimics the human brain to analyze only essential sensor inputs at the point of acquisition, processing data with unparalleled efficiency, precision and economy of energy. Keeping AI/ML local to the chip, independent of the cloud, also dramatically reduces latency. Compared to conventional frame-based camera solutions using CNNs, BrainChip’s event-based vision solutions provide benefits of faster detection, lower computations, better tracking, lower power and cost, and lower memory requirements.

“The objective of event-based vision solution providers has long been a way to achieve faster and more accurate object detection with substantially fewer memory and computation requirements,” said Jonathan Tapson, Chief Development Officer of BrainChip. “BrainChip’s Akida, working in conjunction with Prophesee’s event-based vision systems, provides the ability to compute drone data efficiently, reducing latency for faster detection and minimizing demands on power to provide companies like ARQUIMEA with advantages that have previously been unavailable. We are proud to have our IP leveraged in such an important life-and-death application.”

Source: BrainChip media announcement