A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls
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Re: A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls
#2[deleted]
Re: A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls
#3Counting elements from pictures is how old again now? 20 years? 30 years?
Sure, it's more reliable and you can run it on a phone. But maybe this could have been solved 20 years ago. (Yes, it might not have been as convenient, but for something that apparently is so important, it could have been applied earlier)
Japan, a country which in the 80s was synonymous with technological innovation seems to have slowed down dramatically in adopting new technologies
Edit: of course I'm not saying it's exclusive to Japan. My comment was more in the way of "the first time I saw an actual application of CV counting things in a practical setting was 20 years ago"
Re: A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls
#4They are using an app https://countthings.com/
This seems rather a simple task, however, the app is expensive ($100 per month per device) and limited with the templates for things it can count [1].
Re: A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls
#5Counting elements from pictures is how old again now? 20 years? 30 years? Sure, it's more reliable and you can run it on a phone. But maybe this could have been solved 20 years ago. (Yes, it might not have been as convenient, but for something that apparently is so important, it could have been applied earlier) Japan, a country which in the 80s was synonymous with technological innovation seems to have slowed down dr…
If you think old, unoptimized, high-human labor business processes exist only in Japan, have I got a bridge to sell to you.
Re: A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls
#6Wow, this is such a simple application of ML and it is incredibly valuable. On their website, they charge $100/month per device or $1000/year per device [0] and I bet they're making a killing.
Re: A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls
#7To counter other’s points on pricing - in the end it’s a question of utility vs price. 1k$ per year to cut time to count by 80% may be a great deal to many.
Re: A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls
#8Counting elements from pictures is how old again now? 20 years? 30 years? Sure, it's more reliable and you can run it on a phone. But maybe this could have been solved 20 years ago. (Yes, it might not have been as convenient, but for something that apparently is so important, it could have been applied earlier) Japan, a country which in the 80s was synonymous with technological innovation seems to have slowed down dr…
People outside IT field generally don't even know how counting thing from picture is very trivial computer vision task. This is common everywhere in the world.
Re: A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls
#9They are using an app https://countthings.com/ This seems rather a simple task, however, the app is expensive ($100 per month per device) and limited with the templates for things it can count [1]. [1] https://countthings.com/en/counting-templates
Seems like a low price if it saves labor costs like in the OP. But they can only ask that price because it's such an obscure niche and other people probably didn't even consider that something like that is needed. Good chance they'll soon have competition.
edit: The app has 500k+ downloads and is rated at 3.5/5. People seem to complain about the fact that the templates are so limited. Real opportunity right there I'd guess.
Re: A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls
#10terrible example. You can just make a square from pearls and multiply. If you need to do a lot of it make a box with numbers on the side, tilt it then count and add the remaining row. The weight is probably not irregular enough to justify the tool. There are better examples on the website.
Pricing is just silly. I'm sure it is worth that much to some 0.001% of the potential market.