Construction sites can now be added to the growing list of industrial environments where artificial intelligence is being applied.

Nvidia Corp. today revealed that it has entered a partnership with Tokyo-based Komatsu Ltd., one of the world’s largest heavy equipment manufacturers, to harness AI for improving worker safety in building projects. The collaboration will revolve around the chip maker’s Jetson family of miniature computing modules.

The latest system in the series, the TX2, is about the size of a credit card and features a graphics processing unit based on Nvidia’s Pascal architecture. It’s meant to enable the deployment of machine learning models on devices that can’t accommodate a regular GPU because of power constraints or other operational limitations. As part of their partnership, the chip maker and Komatsu will incorporate Jetson modules into the latter company’s industrial equipment.

The plan is to use the chips for analyzing footage from cameras mounted on various pieces of construction gear. Komatsu will deploy specialized AI software on the modules to keep an eye out for potential dangers.

A Jetson system connected to a truck-mounted camera, for example, could be configured to identify when the driver is getting too close to a guard rail and send them an alert. Another potential application would be to check if construction workers keep enough distance from machinery that might put them at risk.

The fact that footage can be processed locally removes the need to send the data to a remote analytics environment and wait for the results to come back, which facilitates faster response times. That’s significant because issuing a danger warning even a few seconds earlier has the potential to make a big difference in a construction site. Plus, not having to depend on a steady internet connection reduces the operational impact of network outages.

Nvidia said the ability to run machine learning models locally can be useful in other ways as well. On top of improving worker safety, the chip maker will work with Komatsu to enable automated control of industrial machinery and simplify project management using aerial footage collected from drones.

The alliance is the latest in several AI-focused partnerships that Nvidia has struck recently. Just last month, the company teamed up with General Electric Co.’s healthcare division and Nuance Communications Inc. on two separate projects aimed at applying machine learning to medical image analysis. 

Image: Nvidia