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Israel's Tech Success in Computer Vision

(Financial Times-UK) Mehul Srivastava - Israel has become a leader in one of the most promising frontiers in the technology world: computer vision. Applications across dozens of industries have one thing in common: the need for computers to figure out what their cameras are seeing, and the need for those computers to tell them what to do next. The biggest success story is Mobileye, which uses a dozen cheap cameras to see the traffic around prototype autonomous cars and then guide them through traffic. In 2017, Intel paid $15.3 billion to acquire the technology. Computer vision slides into a broad range of different civilian industries, spawning companies in agriculture, medicine, sports, self-driving cars, the diamond industry and even shopping. In Israel, this lucrative field has benefited from a large pool of engineers and entrepreneurs trained for that very task in a little-known group in the military - Unit 9900 - where they fine-tuned computer algorithms to digest millions of surveillance photos and sift out actionable intelligence. Zebra Medical uses artificial intelligence to scan millions of MRI and other images from around the world, guiding radiologists to the slightest sign of disease. At medical diagnostics start-up FDNA, engineers are figuring out how a picture of someone's face could reveal rare genetic disorders. Physimax uses a bank of cameras to analyze the posture of athletes, then suggests changes to their exercise routines and techniques. It is already being used by the U.S. military, the Indiana Pacers, a professional basketball team, and Brazil's Flamengo soccer team.
2018-11-23 00:00:00
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