Using AI and AR to improve ArcellorMittal's production process at a Hackathon

Damn, how many years of experience do you need to be able to come up with workable solutions as fast as this?

I didn't understand where the AR was overlaid. Was it on the glasses on which the operator was wearing or on a LED monitor ?

6 months, here's why: They random forested height data, everyone random forests these days. It's quick and dirty and yields good accuracy. Not only that, everyone seems to support a built in Random Forest training model, programs from pandas/numpy/scikit to R has it built in. Height data seems the easiest to go by, to short and it has a kink that may cause cracking in the future as the metal oxidizes. What were their 3 models? Who knows? But their idea of combining 3 models, that 3 different teams have made is standard in all DataScience competitions. This is called ensembling. ArToolkit for Unreal Engine, someone else made that and they probably just connected a bunch of blocks together with Unreal's script engine. Honestly, 6 months max and you can do this in a day yourself.

They did not have VR glasses, so they simulated them using a helmet-mounted webcam and a monitor. The AR weld risk profile (my words) is overlaid on the captured video images. See the article's video with caption 'Screen-capture of the AR experience...'

This is a really cool piece of engineering, but I'm bothered by the idea that the going rate for a huge multinational corporation to get a prototype of a potentially extremely valuable technology is less than 10k of prize money [1], plus a "mini-drone race" and "snacks and food".

Maybe it's just me, but I find this type of corporate-sponsored hackathon exploitative and distastefull. We're not talking about an event that is producing a social good in an area that is otherwise underinvested. This is purely profit-motivated, and ArcelorMittal can afford to pay a lot more for a prototype like this.

1. https://www.eventbrite.nl/e/the-arcelormittal-challenge-hack...