Amazon Web Services Inc. today announced the general availability of Amazon Lookout for Vision, a cloud service that uses machine learning to spot defects and anomalies in visual representation using computer vision.

Designed with manufacturing companies in mind, the service can identify differences in images of objects at large scale, delivering the ability to identify manufacturing and production defects such as cracks, dents, incorrect colors and irregular shapes. The technology uses a technique called “few-shot learning” so it can train a model for a customer using as few as 30 baseline images.

Amazon Lookout for Vision can process thousands of images an hour to spot defects and anomalies with no machine learning experience required. Customers send camera images to Amazon Lookout for Vision in real-time to identify anomalies, such as damage to a product’s surface, missing components and other irregularities in production lines. In addition to enabling the service to detect anomalies without large amounts of training data, this capability allows the service to adapt to a wide range of inspection tasks within industrial settings.

Upon analyzing data, Amazon Lookout for Vision reports images that differ from the baseline via the service dashboard or the “DetectAnomalies” real-time application programing interface so that appropriate action can be taken. The service is said to be sophisticated enough to maintain high accuracy with variances in camera angle, pose and lighting arising from changes in work environments. Customers also can provide feedback on the results with Lookout for Vision automatically retraining the underlying model so the service continuously improves.

“Whether a customer is placing toppings on a frozen pizza or manufacturing finely calibrated parts for an airplane, what we’ve heard unequivocally is that guaranteeing only high-quality products reach end-users is fundamental to their business,” Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of Amazon Machine Learning for AWS, said in a statement. “While this may seem obvious, ensuring such quality control in industrial pipelines can, in fact, be very challenging.”

Combined with Amazon Lookout for Equipment, Amazon Monitron and AWS Panorama — all services launched at AWS re:Invent 2020 in December — Amazon Lookout for Vision provides industrial and manufacturing customers what AWS describes as the “most comprehensive suite of cloud-to-edge industrial machine learning services available.”

Lookout for Vision is offered with no-upfront commitment or minimum fee with customers paying by the hour for their actual usage. The service is offered via the AWS console as well through supporting partners and is also compatible with AWS CloudFormation. Lookout for Vision is available starting today in US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), EU (Ireland), EU (Frankfort), Asia Pacific (Tokyo) and Asia Pacific (Seoul), with availability in additional regions to be rolled out in the coming months.

Image: AWS