Summary: Today, Viam announced a groundbreaking partnership with the Whale and Vessel Safety Task Force (WAVS) to establish an open-source data collection program to advance AI capabilities in detecting marine life — showcasing how Viam can be used for open data to drive collaboration and transparency, as well as the unique and powerful ways Viam brings AI to the edge.
Viam is built to be modular, pluggable, and fully interoperable — meaning that it allows organizations to collect many different kinds of data, from many different sources, across many different vendors — and integrate them all together in a single solution enabling seamless data visibility, optimization through AI/ML, and even the opportunity to plow that data back into machines to drive actuation and changes in the physical world.
In conversations with WAVS, it became clear there is real alignment in leveraging the capabilities of Viam in pursuit of their mission: to identify, develop, and implement technology and monitoring tools in the marine and boating communities in order to mitigate the risk of vessel strikes to wildlife.
Moreover, many of the challenges presented in the marine industry — low connectivity when at sea, a variety of manufacturers and vendors with different software solutions, and resulting challenges when viewing both real-time and historical data — are aspects that Viam is specifically designed and uniquely positioned to solve.
Viam delivers an end-to-end solution
Viam and WAVS are partnering to establish an open-source data collection program that will advance AI capabilities in detecting large marine mammals. Breaking this down, we see three core phases at work:
- Collecting data from many sources independent of vendor, and integrating the data from existing equipment, from various sources
- Open and transparent sharing of the data set for collaboration and AI/ML model building, in a seamless, organized way
- A return pathway for AI/ML models to be delivered back to boats to assist in marine life avoidance
Viam isn’t just delivering a part of a solution, but an end-to-end solution that integrates all existing hardware, manages all data uploads, organizes the data, facilitates open sharing and collaboration of the new data, and allows new models to be built.
Looking ahead, as part of that return pathway, Viam also makes it possible to drive automated actions in the physical world. For example, a model might automatically instruct a boat to slow down in response to an algorithm detecting a whale. Or, a model might trigger visual or audio alerts to encourage a boat crew or passengers to take action. Going even further: because Viam supports simple and quick code deployment to all or part of any fleet, a team could also test multiple models and approaches in order to decide which works best.
Viam makes all this possible, creating a powerful bridge between software and hardware, and bringing the latest technology to devices in the physical world. Whether working with industrial equipment; sensors and IOT; smart home devices; or any other machine with sensing, hardware, and actuation, Viam is an end-to-end solution bringing AI to the edge, and helping organizations do more at scale.
