Starkville, Mississippi, August 27, 2021 – In partnership with Call for Code, IBM introduced the AI Spot Challenge held on July 27, 2021. This Spot Challenge invites developers, data scientists and problem solvers around the world to build and contribute to sustainable, open-source technology projects that make our planet safer. The challenge attracted worldwide project submissions from all 4 continents with themes of Object Detection, Image Recognition, Machine Learning and Augmented Reality to use prediction, optimization, and automation to make the world more secure and resilient.
On August 24th, IBM Spot Challenge leadership announced, Mr. Kumar and his talented team of 3 others as the Grand Prize winners of $15,000. This virtual announcement came as a YouTube live video for public viewing. Participating teams utilized the required Watson Studio and chose to use various open-source frameworks and tools.
The grand prize-winning project, a mobile application called Periscope-AI, allows construction teams to have an unobstructed view of visual communication free from blind spots and low visibility conditions. “Although they may use walkies to help communicate, they may have construction sight sounds that interfere or visual obstructions…and this helps eliminate human error,” stated Kumar. The mobile application provides a peer-to-peer video feed along with AI-driven analysis of the visual information, such as OSHA hand gestures, from a banksman to a heavy-machinery operator. The signals serve as a visual cue and second line of sight to the operator as an added safety layer on traditional worksite premises. Kumar was invited to serve on the team as the Machine Learning Engineer where he trained the Neural Network to send up the signals to the application by API.
Mr. Kumar is currently employed as an Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) Data Scientist with Potentia Analytics, Inc. to develop solutions which employ AI and ML to optimize operational resources and the flow of patients within healthcare systems in the United States and internationally. He received a Master’s in Computer Science and Engineering from Mississippi State University in 2020.
“Although they may use walkies to help communicate, they may have construction sight sounds that interfere or visual obstructions…and this helps eliminate human error.”
-Mr. Kumar, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning data scientist with Potentia Analytics
