Our client, a leading company in evaluating the cleanliness of the city, had developed an image processing algorithm capable of detecting cigarette butt from the roof of a bus. The system relies on machine learning and various technology stack. Despite the great capability of the system, some computing power was required.

Oratek was asked to develop a fully autonomous edge computing system with image acquisition for real-time and live image processing. Thus, we made the system portable, wireless, and (nearly) bulletproof to be mounted on various bus or small truck.

Approach

Our team at Oratek has adopted a three steps approach

We have reviewed the client’s needs and scrapped all the overhead to ensure complete understanding of the feasibility and keep the development to the minimal.

We have proposed a solution mostly including off the shelf components, in order to ensure the development period short and the risks low.

We have set up a solution including multiple Jetson computing units working in parallel, with a dedicated power supply to work of vehicle battery (12V) and wireless communication (WiFi, 3G and GPS). We even added a UPS system to ensure reliability over power cease.

Results

In less than three months, thanks to our multi-skills approach, our team has been able to go from a first meeting to the deployment: a set of fully functional edge computing units allowing our client to take on the road and distribute their solution to cities.