Project description
An AI-enabled platform providing manufacturing SMEs a competitive edge
Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies offer new possibilities. It makes intelligent automation accessible and affordable to small and medium-sized enterprises involved in manufacturing, ensuring that they remain competitive in the global market. Many companies, however, face challenges arising from digitisation and automation, such as costs and time constraints. BitMetrics proposes UniMind – a deep learning SaaS platform that democratises access to intelligent automation of vision-based processes. It is based on three pillars: machine vision, deep learning and robot learning. The EU-funded UniMind project will assess the viability of BitMetrics’ business model in a competitive environment, with the aim of gaining a better understanding of the market for this platform.
Objective
UniMind is a Deep Learning SaaS platform for the intelligent automation of manufacturing processes, minimizing the combination of low-value+high-repetitiveness tasks for human workers. Automating these processes is expensive (i.e. unattainable for SMEs), time-consuming and most of all: inflexible. All solutions are custom-made and not adaptable to different contexts. UniMind significantly lowers the time needed to learn and implement a new process. The algorithm’s learning process is fostered by incremental collaborative learning: the algorithms engaged in different processes and working in different companies are all connected to the cloud, so the work experience of one solution feeds all the others.
UniMind has many possible applications, and we are starting for Visual Quality Control and Random Bin Picking, since both are highly in-demand processes and ideal to train UniMind for other applications. Existing solutions are partial and tailored to clients’ particular needs, not scalable to new applications, shop floor changes and/or scenarios. They are also slow in their deployment, dependent on evolutive maintenance and expensive.
Worldwide revenues in the Machine Vision market have consistently grown since 2015, for all applications (€ 8.77 bn in 2017, growing at a 7.7% CAGR up to € 16.08bn in 2025). BitMetrics has defined a Total Available Market of € 8.47bn of which it will obtain 0.29% share by 2025, having reached a cumulative EBITDA of € 33.64M. Our affordable subscription-based pricing strategy will lead us to reach these numbers. Our product is offered through a SaaS model. As a result, SMEs will be able to affordably automate their processes for the first time in the history.
UniMind targets the manufacturing industry, specifically the Automotive, Electronics and Food & Beverages sectors. Nissan Motors (as client) and Siemens (as distributor) have already shown interest in UniMind.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringmanufacturing engineering
- engineering and technologyother engineering and technologiesfood technology
- social sciencessociologyindustrial relationsautomation
- social scienceseconomics and businessbusiness and managementbusiness models
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligencemachine learningdeep learning
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
08025 BARCELONA
Spain
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.