Matt Safford
March 28, 2015
Big data is getting so big, it’s slipping the surly bonds of Earth.
A startup called Orbital Insight, which recently raised nearly $9 million in funding, is using satellite imagery and cutting-edge computing techniques to estimate global oil surplus, predict crop shortfalls before harvest time and spot retail trends by keeping track of the number of cars in big-box parking lots. It should also be possible to train the software to spot illegal deforestation early and better track climate change.
The company uses machine learning techniques and computing networks that mimic the human brain to spot patterns in massive amounts of visual data. Facebook uses similar techniques to recognize faces in uploaded images and auto-tag you and your friends. But instead of searching for faces, Orbital Insight is taking advantage of the growing abundance of satellite imagery, thanks to the rise of small, low-cost satellites, and teaching their networks to automatically recognize things like vehicles, the rate of construction in China and the shadows cast by floating-lid oil containers, which change depending on how full they are.
No comments:
Post a Comment