2020 Vision
Computer vision has been around for a while — think industrial inspections and credit card scanners. However, recent advancements in machine vision and AI have allowed for applications of computer vision to a much broader set of industries and use cases. For example, we are now seeing computer vision used in advertising, automotive, security, healthcare and agriculture. Fueled by recent technical advances in computational abilities and the availability of large sets of training data, startups (rather than researchers and academics) are applying these deep learning technologies to numerous use cases. While not at peak hype cycle, an abundance of new startups are entering into the space, perhaps because no clear market leaders have emerged. And of course, investors are taking notewith over 69 deals and $522M going into computer vision startups in 2016 as compared with $44 million across 15 deals in 2012.
Here are a few startups with diverse and practical use cases:
- Pinterest recently launched Lens, which works like Shazam but for the visual world.
- Realeyes and Unruly both use emotional analytics instead of traditional online surveys or focus groups, to gather direct responses rather than relying on subjective opinions.
- Clarifai builds image recognition technology that can recognize thousands of categories, objects, and tags.
- Smart Eye provides a real-time and non-invasive eye, eyelid and head tracking technology.
- Osmo, geared towards kids, uses computer vision to allow any object (e.g. pen and paper) to interact with a digital device.
Want more? Check out LDV’s analysis of where visual technology is heading.
