Nvidia and construction giant Komatsu partner on AI for job site safety

Nvidia is teaming up with Komatsu, one of the largest manufacturers of heavy equipment for construction and mining in the world, to deploy AI at worksites across these industries in order to promote safety and increase efficiency.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced the partnership at GTC Japan today, and described how it’ll make use of Nvidia GPU hardware to provide virtual ‘brains’ to heavy machinery at work sites, with AI powered by Nvidia’s Jetson platform.

This team-up builds on work done by Komatsu previously, as it originally rolled out its SMARTCONSTRUCTION program to build connected, smart worksites starting in 2015. Now, Nvidia’s tech will help Komatsu build 3D visualizations of entire construction sites, with real-time representation of people and machinery working on the ground.

Drones provided by SkyCatch will offer imaging for visualization, and Jetson will provide image processing and recognition to cameras spread throughout Komatsu’s construction equipment for computing at the edge.

Nvidia has done a lot to build out the use of its technology in industrial and commercial applications, and this could significantly improve safety and efficiency of construction operations if adopted broadly.