👁 Drop #5: TuMeke - Computer Vision for Safer Factories
Harnessing AI + Computer Vision to Build Safer Working Conditions for Factory Workers
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This week, we jump to the factory floors with TuMeke. This Stanford-alumni and ex-Google founded start-up is using computer vision to eliminate injury for factory workers at a fraction of the cost of today’s solutions.
⚾ The Elevator Pitch
Yo, do you lift?! We're not talking about the gym … we're talking about the 300 million workers in manufacturing jobs across the world. It's here, with long days of lifting, pushing, and pulling, that most workplace injuries occur.
TuMeke is an ergonomic assessment platform to prevent injuries on factory floors. By using computer vision joint tracking and any smartphone camera, TuMeke produces a risk assessment that guides factory decisions and ultimately reduces the likelihood of a labor-related injury. Importantly, TuMeke does all this without stopping production or using invasive wearable tech.
👇 The Drop Down
💻 Site: https://www.tumeke.io/
⏰ Founded: 2019
🏫 School: Stanford University
📈 Tech trend: Computer Vision
👣 Traction: Multiple prototypes, pilots with manufacturers, some paying customers
🎳 Team: Recent Stanford University graduates, ex-Google, CS + business experience
Diwakar Ganesan - Co-founder, Stanford University
Riley Noland - Co-founder, Stanford University
Zach Noland - Co-founder, Google/Oracle alum
🔍 Why We Like It
💻 They have a "10x improvement" solution
Manufacturers spend a lot of resources on safety solutions. Traditionally, the current first step for risk assessment is hiring expensive health experts, who go around factory floors assessing dangerous activities - sometimes disrupting production. These experts manually analyze movements, take videos, and finally, make recommendations. On top of all this, it takes them up to a week to come back with results! TuMeke provides a 10x cost and time improvement by synthesizing the time-consuming part of a health professional’s role into a simple app; just record movements through a smartphone camera, tap a button, and boom — risk analysis complete. TuMeke even goes beyond to provide an actionable recommendation on what ways to make the work-floor safer.📈 Their technical expertise is their competitive moat
Computer vision isn't easy but, TuMeke has spent over a year honing their algorithms to deliver analysis down "to the joint". Their precise app married AI knowledge and a leading industrial designer's expertise in safety. The result is a piece of software that can make a manufacturer exponentially more efficient in keeping their workplaces safe -- something that’s hard to replicate. Imagine an AI that is trained on years worth of ergonomic data rather than just the experiences of one or two health experts — it's a world of difference.⚡️There are 'desperate' customers out there!
While injury prevention is always a priority, it may not be a top spending item line for many manufacturers. However, as supply chains get leaner to meet volatile demand & preferences, safer workplaces become a business imperative. A small plant team would suffer greatly from an injury on the factory floor - making safety a 'desperate problem'. For lean manufacturers, TuMeke would make a great investment to keep things running smoothly.
🎤 BONUS: Founder’s corner
Q: What’s the future of work look like?
A: We’re betting that ML powered tools are going to change the way manufacturers keep their workplaces safe. It’s hard to say what the long term changes are going to be, but in the short term we’re going to see AI informing and augmenting the decisions humans make. There are already a bunch of oil companies that use CV to tell when equipment is damaged and to alert the relevant engineers — we predict such software is going to become more mainstream and high-powered.