Visual AI Company Oosto Partners with CyLab Biometrics Center
By Daniel Tkacik
Visual AI company Oosto, which recently announced a rebranding from its former name, AnyVision, has announced a new collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University’s CyLab Biometrics Center. The partnership will focus on early-stage research in object, body, and behavior recognition.
The company’s research partnership with the CyLab Biometric Research Center will focus on advanced object classification and behavior recognition algorithms for commercial use cases. This collaboration will help Oosto address a broad range of safety-related use cases, including object detection (e.g., weapons on school grounds) and behavioral analysis (e.g., when someone falls down). As part of the partnership, Marios Savvides, a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Director of the CyLab Biometrics Center, will join Oosto as the Chief AI Scientist to expand Oosto’s AI team led by CTO, Dieter Joecker.
“We were impressed by Oosto's commitment to the fair and ethical use of the technology, preserving user privacy, and creating safer spaces for everyone,” says Savvides. “These shared values make Oosto an ideal research partner for CMU to advance object, body, and behavioral recognition and to positively impact our collective safety.”
AnyVision pioneered Vision AI to automate watchlist alerting, identifying security risks as well as valuable customers in real-time to personalize customer experiences and enhance physical security. The rebranded Oosto will leverage the power of Vision AI to enhance the safety of customers, guests, and employees. Solutions include touchless access control, video analytics, and new flavors of video-based recognition (object, body, and behavioral recognition), which deliver the insights and alerts to protect pivotal stakeholders from bad actors and security threats.
Over the past 10 years, more than 400 startups linked to CMU have raised more than $7 billion in funding. CMU has a long history in artificial intelligence including the creation of the first AI computer program in 1956 and pioneering work in self-driving cars, facial recognition, and natural language processing.
Savvides was named one of the “2020 Outstanding Contributors to AI” awards from the former U.S. Secretary of the Army. His research has been focused on developing core AI and machine-learning algorithms that were successfully applied for robust face detection, face recognition, iris biometrics, and most recently, general object detection and scene understanding. Savvides has generated over 35 patents and patent publications, and over 50 unpublished patent applications to date.
“Under the leadership of Prof. Savvides, CMU’s CyLab Biometric Research Center has an impressive track record of successfully transferring AI research out of a lab environment and into reliable and scalable solutions,” says Oosto CEO Avi Golan. “Visual intelligence is in its infancy and there is so much more work yet to be done. With this partnership, we now have an elite U.S.-based AI research center that will work in concert with our existing AI teams to accelerate the development of advanced deep learning algorithms and exploration of new safety-related use cases, markets, and industries, including medical, payments, and smart cities.”