VisualCortex signs mutual non-disclosure agreement with the University of
Wollongong’s SMART Infrastructure Facility, joining the Hub for Artificial
Intelligence of Things Solutions – an Australian government backed initiative
supported by Telstra, Microsoft and NVIDIA
VisualCortex – the Video Intelligence Platform connecting computer vision’s
potential to real-world business outcomes – has partnered with the University
of Wollongong (UOW), joining its research and development hub for Artificial
Intelligence of Things (AIOT) Solutions.
Under the terms of the mutual non-disclosure agreement between VisualCortex and
the UOW, the computer vision start-up and the university’s SMART Infrastructure
Facility will share exclusive research and software development capabilities to
drive smart video analytics innovations,
including machine learning (ML) models, learnings from real-world computer
vision implementations, and local employment opportunities.
View the joint partnership video here: https://bit.ly/3RP9A82
As part of the partnership, VisualCortex has established a satellite office at
UOW’s Illawarra-based Innovation Campus — a technology precinct that fosters
industry – research collaboration — and joins the Telstra-UOW Hub for AIOT
Solutions. The hub is backed by a AUD$1.7 million government funding grant
through the Strategic University Reform Fund (SURF); designed to establish
Illawarra as a global leader in AIOT solutions for communities, enterprises and
governments. The hub is also supported via collaboration with technology
industry giants Telstra, Microsoft and NVIDIA. The initiative brings together
over 30 experts from industry and academia, focusing on delivering globally
applicable AIOT outcomes in smart transport, smart logistics, resilient
infrastructure and intelligent manufacturing.
VisualCortex CEO and Co-Founder, Patrick Elliott, said that partnering with
UOW’s SMART Infrastructure Facility and AIOT solutions hub delivered practical
outcomes in three main ways.
“UOW and SMART bring world-leading AI research capabilities to the fore, which
have transformative potential within today’s computer vision market,” said
Elliott. “Secondly, because SMART and the Telstra-UOW Hub for AIOT Solutions
are mandated to apply academic rigour to real-world problems, they collaborate
extremely well with industry and the public sector. The ability to work with
PhD students and doctors of AI, and directly apply their research and skills to
tangible computer vision challenges, is truly exciting.
“We have a very strong meeting of minds: We provide a Video Intelligence
Platform, which enables academics to
productionize ML models at scale and see their research make real-world change.
At the same time, UOW provides outstanding academic expertise, industry
relationships, and data governance. The marriage of the two – VisualCortex’s
enterprise-ready computer vision platform,
coupled with UOW’s ability to use that platform as a vehicle to deliver
academic-produced ML models to industry – represents an ideal partnership. It’s
a win for everyone.
“Thirdly, the partnership provides a mutually beneficial avenue to industry for
university researchers and students. To be successful and scale, VisualCortex
needs access to a steady stream of the best available talent. For UOW, our
partnership provides a clear employment pathway via VisualCortex’s talent
exchange, internship and graduate hiring programs.”
UOW’s SMART Infrastructure Facility specialises in applying data analytics,
advanced simulation, Smart Cities technology and video analytics to core
infrastructure challenges, including electricity, roads, rail urban growth and
regional development.
“While SMART Infrastructure Facility’s journey into smart video analytics is
relatively recent, growth in effort and demand has been nearly exponential,”
said SMART Infrastructure Facility Director, Professor Pascal Perez. “So we
know, based on its technology and the number of requests we’re fielding, the
market opportunity for VisualCortex is wide and broad.
“What VisualCortex is trying to do is brave: At the moment, most of the video
analytics market develops around vertical integration; and bespoke – if not
ad-hoc – solutions for specific sectors, or even sub-sectors. That means we’re
going to see a lot of redundancies in terms of the deployment of all these
single-use-case computer vision tools and
the fees that end-users will have to pay. So, we need a transversal approach,
which VisualCortex is bringing to bear with its industry-agnostic platform.”
Perez echoed Elliott’s comments, characterising the UOW – VisualCortex
partnership as “a perfect marriage”.
“We share the same approach to smart video analytics – we don’t see one sector;
we’re interested in a transversal approach and the fundamentals behind the
different use cases,” said Perez. “At SMART, we’re good at assessing new use
cases for computer vision, optimising algorithms and wrapping them into a
container. But, we need to push these new ML models into something for
deployment, in order to be useful to industry. VisualCortex’s Video
Intelligence Platform provides that ideal something.
“It’s the best of both worlds; and I really look forward to developing a strong
partnership with VisualCortex in the years to come.”
About VisualCortex
VisualCortex is making video data actionable in the enterprise. As the world’s
best Video Intelligence Platform, VisualCortex provides the stability and
scalability to productionize computer vision technology for the first time.
Unlike camera-side or point solutions, VisualCortex can be used for any video
analytics use case in any industry. VisualCortex’s production-ready cloud-based
environment transforms video assets into analyzable streams of data at scale.
The VisualCortex platform delivers the artificial intelligence smarts,
governance and usability, enabling organisations to connect any number of video
streams, repositories and use existing commodity hardware. An intuitive user
interface, out-of-the-box reporting, range of configurations and integrations
empower non-technical people to produce, analyse and act on insights derived
from computer vision throughout the enterprise. Organisations can easily
combine these AI-generated video insights with other data sources and systems
to facilitate both real-time operations and strategic analysis. The
VisualCortex Model Store also provides a secure marketplace for customers,
partners and independent machine learning experts to share quality controlled
computer vision models. F
