This software startup just made artificial intelligence breakthrough using General-AI for 3D Object Recognition from any direction

The recognition of objects is one of the main goals for computer vision research. 3-D object recognition has many industrial applications and applications in our daily lives. Some of the applications include: the automation on the assembly line, inspection of integrated circuit chips to detect defects in them, security in face and fingerprint recognition, medical diagnosis and detection of abnormal cells that may indicate cancer, remote sensing for automated recognition of possible hostile terrain to generate maps and aids for the visually impaired of mechanical guide dogs. However, 3D object recognition has been one of the challenging processes facing computer vision systems.

One Maryland-based startup may finally have the answer to the problem. The startup, Z Advanced Computing, announced today that it has made technical and scientific breakthrough towards Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI), where the various attributes and details of 3D (three dimensional) objects can be recognized from any view or angle, using its novel General-AI techniques. Don’t let their ancient-looking website fool you. The startup is made up of a world-class team of scientists and the brightest minds in artificial intelligence and machine learning. The late Professor Lotfi A. Zadeh, “The Father of Fuzzy Logic”, was one also of the company’s technical advisors and inventors.

The ZAC General AI Platform enables fast, accurate, and reliable recognition and search, e.g., for people, objects, patterns, and actions, within images and videos. Our horizontal platform features tools and APIs to enable wide variety of vertical applications and industries to take advantage of the platform’s efficient, detailed, and accurate recognition and search, e.g., for medical imaging/diagnosis, e-commerce/retail, search engine, referral and ad networks, social networks, learning machines, data mining, knowledge extraction & analytics, big data (e.g., generated from sensors, cameras, wearables, or IoTs), video summarization or search, self-driving cars, biometrics, security, and military and intelligence applications.

“With our superior approach, complex 3D objects can be recognized from any direction, using only a small number of training samples, based on our General-AI platform,” said Dr. Saied Tadayon, CTO of ZAC. “You cannot do this with the Specific-AI techniques, such as Deep Neural Networks, even with an extremely large number of training samples. That’s basically hitting the limits of the Specific-AI techniques,” continued Dr. Bijan Tadayon, CEO of ZAC. “For complex tasks, such as 3D image recognition, you need General-AI,” emphasized Dr. Saied Tadayon. “This is the first demonstration of General-AI techniques, which is fairly similar to the ways humans learn and recognize,” added Dr. Bijan Tadayon.

This technology enables image search in a wide variety of applications, such as e-commerce, ad network, autonomous vehicles, medical imaging, satellite imaging, biometrics, and security. ZAC’s intellectual property portfolio comprises over 450 inventions, including 11 issued US patents.

ZAC has an impressive team of scientists and developers. The development is headed by Saied Tadayon, a scientist and veteran software developer, who got his PhD from Cornell at age 23. ZAC’s world-renowned advisors include Prof. David Lee (Nobel Laureate in Physics), Prof. Mory Gharib (Vice Provost of Research for Caltech), and Prof. Robert Buhrman (Fmr. Sr. Vice Provost of Research for Cornell).  ZAC also obtained funding from the State of Maryland (TEDCO) following an earlier angel investment.

At the 2017 Golden Goose Award Ceremony, from left to right: Dr. Saied Tadayon (CTO of ZAC), Prof. David Culler (Interim Dean of Data Sciences, U.C. Berkeley) accepting the award on behalf of Prof. Zadeh, Mr. Frank Sesno (Director of School of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington University, and former CNN anchor) acting as the master of ceremony, and Dr. Bijan Tadayon (CEO of ZAC). (Credit: Z Advanced Computing, Inc.)