Japan’s Komatsu Selects NVIDIA as Partner for Deploying AI to Create Safer, More Efficient Construction Sites

Japan’s Komatsu Selects
NVIDIA as Partner for Deploying AI

to Create Safer, More
Efficient Construction Sites

SINGAPORE—December 13, 2017—Komatsu, one of the world’s largest manufacturers
of construction and mining
equipment, has selected NVIDIA as its partner to bring AI to jobsites, making
them safer and more efficient, NVIDIA announced today.

The
partnership – described at GTC Japan by
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang – will focus on Komatsu using NVIDIA GPUs
to visualise and analyse entire construction sites. The NVIDIA Jetson™ AI platform will serve as the brain of heavy
machinery deployed on these sites, enabling improved safety and productivity.

“Artificial
intelligence is sweeping across industries, and its next frontier is autonomous
intelligent machines,” Huang said, speaking at NVIDIA’s final of seven global
GPU Technology Conferences this year. “Future machines will perceive their
surroundings and be continuously alert, helping operators work more efficiently
and safely. The construction and mining industries will benefit greatly from
these advances.”

Construction
is the latest in a series of industries in which NVIDIA has signed agreements
with market leaders to help revolutionise how they operate. Among these are
partnerships with GE Healthcare and Nuance in the area of medical imaging; FANUC in the field
of robotics; and more than 225 car makers, startups and research houses – among them,
Audi, Tesla, Toyota, and Volvo – for autonomous
driving.

Construction Industry Primed for AI’s Benefits

Safety
risks and inefficiencies in the construction industry make it particularly well
suited for improvements powered by AI.

Construction
sites are generally considered among the more dangerous workplaces because of
the presence of heavy equipment, uneven terrain and continuous activity. Last
year, sites in Japan alone recorded some 300 deaths and more than 15,000
injuries, according to the Japan Construction Occupational Safety and Health
Association.

And Japan’s
construction industry is particularly challenged because of the nation’s severe
labor shortage due to an aging population. Of the 3.4 million skilled workers
in the domestic industry (as of 2014), roughly 1.1 million, or one-third, are
likely to leave in the next decade, according to the Japan Federation of
Construction Contractors.

AI to Augment Komatsu’s “SMARTCONSTRUCTION” Initiative

To help
address these issues, Komatsu began in 2015 rolling out its “SMARTCONSTRUCTION”
initiative, connecting data related to onsite workers and objects to make
worksites safer and more productive. The initiative has been introduced in more
than 4,000 sites across the country, with plans to expand both domestically and
internationally.

“We’ll
start integrating NVIDIA GPUs into our construction sites,” said Yuichi
Iwamoto, senior executive officer, chief technology officer at Komatsu. “By
leveraging NVIDIA’s experience in image processing, virtualisation and AI, we
can further transform construction areas into jobsites of the future.”

Extending the
SMARTCONSTRUCTION initiative, Komatsu will use NVIDIA technology to create 3D
visualisations of construction sites, showing the real-time interaction of
people, machinery and objects. Costly onsite equipment can be closely monitored
to ensure it is used with optimal efficiency.

NVIDIA
GPUs will communicate with drones and cameras in the construction sites, acting
as an AI platform for analysis and visualisation. SkyCatch will provide drones
to gather and map 3D images for visualising the terrain at the edge. OPTiM, an
IoT management-software company, will provide an application to identify
individuals and machinery collected from surveillance cameras.
Both of these Komatsu partners are also members of NVIDIA’s
Inception program
for AI startups.