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Innovator's Vista

Terahertz Technology Finding Usage in Biomedical, Security, Pharma, Food, and Automotive Industry

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Innovator's Vista

Terahertz Technology Finding Usage in Biomedical, Security, Pharma, Food, and Automotive Industry

Terahertz (THz) radiation is a form of electromagnetic radiation, whose frequency lies between Infrared light and microwaves i.e. in the range of ~0.3-10THz. The range is generally referred as THz gap as there was very minimal work was done on these radiations due to absence of suitable sources and detectors. The things have changed now with the advances in photonics –science of light that deals with the generation, detection and manipulation of light– which created various powerful solutions both for generation and detection of terahertz waves.

These advances have brought terahertz technology to the centre stage. Along with this some properties of Terahertz radiation like it can well penetrate many materials such as paper, plastics, textiles and foams, it is non-ionizing, absorbed by water and high chemical sensitivity have led it to be used in many applications. Areas such as Biomedical, Security, Pharma, Food, and Automotive Industry are now adopting this technology. Some of these are discussed below.

Biomedical

Terahertz radiation is non-ionizing so it does not damage DNA and is safe for use in tissues so this radiation has significant potential in medical diagnosis. Particularly in cancer imaging they can be ideal in measuring the superficial soft tissues in which most cancers occur. It is possible to distinguish normal tissue from cancer tissues via spectroscopic imaging through this radiation.

TeraLumen Solutions, a startup is using this technology with advanced machine learning algorithms for cancer detection. The startup has developed intraoperative Terahertz device — usable during the course of a surgical operation — for rapid cancer margin detection in Breast cancer, Oral cancer and Head and Neck cancer. The company also claims it to be extentable to other prominent cancers.

Security

With an increasing variety of threats like chemical, biological and radiological elements, Terahertz imaging can be used to detect hidden objects in clothing and common packing materials and envelopes without opening the container or disturbing its integrity. As it is non ionising unlike X-ray machine and is completely harmless for humans, it has the potential to be used in security screening and counterterrorism.

Pharma

X-ray technology emits ionizing radiation that can have detrimental impact on human and animal health. In this context, Terahertz rays are unique and safe alternatives to X-rays as they are harmless. Terahertz rays and THz-imaging can also help in nondestructive testing (NDT) technique during the production of drugs, medical products etc for inspection of plastic containers with pills in quality control.

Food Inspection:

X-rays’s ionizing radiation can also have its detrimental effect on biological agents. So TeraHertz rays can be used by food manufacturers and packagers to inspect the food in packaging. THz imaging systems can easily detect a presence of fungus, insects or any other foreign agent present through inspecting several polyethylene bags. THz technology being non invasive doesn’t require the food to be checked manually.

Automotive:

TeraHertz technology can be used in automotive technology for detection of corrosion in coated metal parts and presence of disrupted steel and other foreign inclusions in rubber parts. Even in painted parts as THz signals get clearly reflected in noncorroded metal parts while corroded parts reflect the signal poorly so the corroded metal can be detected easily. They also used to detect automobile paints thickness measurements and quality evaluation in real time.

Market

The TeraHertz technology market is witnessing various technological advancements, with researchers across the globe developing new ways to utilize terahertz energy in developing advanced devices/systems. According to a Report , the Global Terahertz Technologies Market is highly competitive and consists of several major players. These companies are leveraging on strategic collaborative initiatives and are also acquiring start-ups working on terahertz technologies to strengthen their product capabilities.





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Innovator's Vista

QR Code-Based Solution for Beat Patrolling

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Innovator's Vista

QR Code-Based Solution for Beat Patrolling

Beat patrolling is done by Police to ensure the safety of residents during the night hours. In the conventional logbook system, beat police manually record their movements in beat books kept at particular points. The beat cops visit the points and mention the time of visit. There is also scope for manipulation as keeping track of every beat is not possible for senior officers.

Rezler system Private Limited, a company developing innovative smart-secure technology has launched  QR code-based Subahu e-beat system. The system requires police to scan QR codes placed along their routes with their mobile phones. The app uses face recognition and allows police officers to download photos and write remarks. The system can also be monitored on a real-time basis from the control room. The officer in-charge will not only get a confirmation, as soon as the beat policeman scans the code. With this the movement of Police can also be monitored through through GPS. 

The end to end eco system with lot of Patrolling related have below mentioned features:

  • QR Scan Patrolling: The QR-code tags are placed at each beat point When Beat Police scans the QR-code the information is sent to the Admin and Web Applications.
  • Vehicle Patrolling: Beat vehicle having the Subhahu installed smartphone moves through the added fence, locations will be updated automatically in the server.
  • Live Incident: Beat police can send text message or take a photo of the suspicious person/object or incident and update it to the higher officers.
  • Customer specific Feature: Along with Beat points it has an option to integrate CCTNS information as History List, MOB, Rowdy sheeters and Gun licenses information to respective information to respective beat number.
  • Beat Tracking: This features allows the higher Police officers to do real time tracking of beat police.
  • Advanced Reporting: Each level officer is given the separate admin ID, they can check all the information about patrolling on daily basis, monthly basis or whenever beat police wants
  • Face Recognition Using AI & ML: Face recognition for beat punching and attendance of the Beat Officers and for searching from Bad Characters.
  • Live Tracking: Realtime tracking of the beat points punching and Beat Officers.

Law Enforcement Softwares by automating standard examination procedures and reducing work process automation efforts help officers do their jobs faster and more effectively.  Combining emerging technologies to policing give forces faster access to right pieces of information and hence achieve better awareness. An increasing number of start-ups are coming up in this space in developing countries.

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Innovator's Vista

Warehouse Automation for Quick Commerce

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Innovator's Vista

Warehouse Automation for Quick Commerce

Automation, use of technology to perform tasks with reduced human assistance, is becoming more and more prevalent in the industries such as manufacturing, robotics, and automotives. It offers many benefits like increase in productivity, reduction in risk related to labor.

Warehouse automation i.e. blending of stores and warehouses and the use of warehouse robotics, conveyors and automation technologies in e-commerce, is also seen as having a lot of potential. These systems can eliminate labor-intensive and time-consuming duties hence free workers up to focus on more value-added tasks, like quality control.

Quick commerce, a unique business model where the delivery of goods and services is done within 10-30 minutes of ordering, has expedited need for automation. The complexity of the Indian warehouses given their density, smaller size, and abundantly available cost-effective labor, present another challenge.

Goods to Person (G2P) warehouse automation holds the potential satisfy the needs of their demanding consumers. G2P robotics are Goods to Person robots such as Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs), Automatic Storage and Retrieval Systems (ASRS) and Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs).

Autonomous Mobile Robots – use on-board sensors and processors to autonomously move materials within a warehouse, without the need for wires, markers, or strips. AMRs can learn their environment and plan the route considering it, other AMRs, blocked pathways, and humans.

Automated Guided Vehicles – driverless, mobile vehicles guided by wires, magnetic strips, or sensors and restricted to following fixed routes. They can detect other robots, humans, or objects in front of them but must wait until the obstacle has cleared before they can continue.

Automated storage and retrieval systems: AS/RS, are made of a variation of computer-controlled systems that automatically place and retrieve loads from set storage locations in a facility with precision, accuracy and speed. Some of the systems that are used are: Vertical carousels, horizontal carousels, and Vertical Lift Modules (VLMs), Stacker Cranes, Pallet shuttles, Miniload systems, Cube based storage and Collaborative robots.

Automated Warehouses claim to allow deployment that is on average 10x faster with negligible installation capex and generate 3x higher ROI vs. competition. It also increases productivity by 3X, throughput by up to 50 percent, and space optimisation by up to 30 percent along with ensuring timely delivery of consumer orders.

A startup ecosystem is developing around this use case across the world. Warehouse Automation is one of the interesting new themes which are gaining popularity.

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Innovator's Vista

Computer Vision for Quality Inspection

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Innovator's Vista

Computer Vision for Quality Inspection

In manufacturing sector whether it is clothing and textiles, petroleum, chemicals and plastics, electronics, computers and transportation, food production, metal manufacturing etc, poor production quality has a significant impact on efficiency. It results in additional operational and financial costs in form of lost time, wasted resources, scraps and decreased efficiency. Therefore, maintaining quality standards is of utmost importance in the field of manufacturing.

Typically product is visually inspected for defects which is a highly manual process. It is time consuming, prone to errors and dependent on operator’s experience and requires consistency which is not always possible.  Rule-based visual inspection machines which are programmed, are not flexible, and cannot adapt to product changes and can only detect a handful of defects at a time.

By using computer vision in manufacturing quality inspection can be automated during the production process.  There are several advantages of using computer vision like reduced cognitive load for operators, no programming required, and it adapts to product changes. It also makes inspections faster, more accurate, and efficient. There are today several manufacturing firms that are shifting towards using deep learning and computer vision for quality control and inspection tasks. 

Computer Vision:

Computer vision seeks to replicate and automate tasks that the human visual system can do. It is an interdisciplinary scientific field that aims to give computers the ability to extract a high-level understanding of the visual world from digital images and videos. It uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) and deep learning models to enable machines accurately identify, interpret, understand, classify and react to objects in form of visual data like digital images from cameras and videos.

More sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI)–based vision systems can enable more powerful visual inspection solutions. These solutions can handle complex applications with less engineering time compared to traditional machine vision solutions.

These systems are faster and simpler process that can carry out repetitive and monotonous tasks at a faster rate, which simplifies the work for humans. Computer vision systems better trained through all kinds of data generally commit zero mistakes resulting in faster delivery of high-quality products and services. With no room for faulty products and services, companies do not have to spend money on fixing their flawed processes.

By using a laser coupled with a 2D camera, object edges can be more easily located and “pseudo 3D” images can be produced. These 3D machine vision systems creates a full 3D profile of the object by stitching together the individual lines of image data that makes inspection of complex assemblies and sub-assemblies as well as individual components easier.

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Innovator's Vista

Drones for sectors like Agriculture, Industrial, Environmental, Public and Private agencies

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Innovator's Vista

Drones for sectors like Agriculture, Industrial, Environmental, Public and Private agencies

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles is a class of aircrafts that can fly without the onboard presence of pilots. They can be handled remotely with a controller or tablet (Drones) or operate autonomously. They are equipped with different state of the art technology such as infrared cameras, GPS and laser with remote ground control systems (GSC).

Impact of commercial drone — drones made for specific types of jobs both corporate and consumer applications — on country’s GDP is increasing. It is among the fastest-growing market in the world and according to a Business Today Report India’s UAV market will be worth $1.81 billion (or Rs 13,575 crore) by FY26, while the Drone Federation of India estimates the industry to touch Rs 50,000 crore in the next five years. 

Due to limitations on economic front in surveillance, difficulty in operating in narrow and confined spaces, traveling long distances manually. Unmanned aerial vehicles are finding application in various sectors as payload delivery, traffic monitoring, surveillance and in sectors like Agriculture, Industrial, Environmental, Public and Private agencies.

Aerosys Aviation India, a startup is working on developing drones for various applications. The company is using Design Thinking, creativity, Innovation and Analytical Approach to solve complex problems.

Some of the solutions they provide are:

Land surveying: Survey drones generate high-resolution orthomosaic—large, map-quality image with high detail and resolution made by combining many smaller images— and detailed 3D models of areas where low-quality, outdated or even no data, are available.

Surveillance: UAVs equipped with an RGB camera allow them to provide imagery of different Areas. Drones can cover large areas with minimal time or period of non reachable areas with low risk and cost effectiveness. Surveillance is the observation of a person, crowded areas, infrastructure, behaviour, activities, building etc for the protecting and managing purpose.

Agriculture: Detection of issues like disease, water stress, pest infestation, nutrient deficiencies, and more. The specific filters on multispectral cameras highlight changes in chlorophyll content in plants, which is oftentimes an indicator of disease or stress.

Apart from this the company is also working on providing solutions for Border Security, Forest and Wildlife Monitoring, Infrastructure inspection in Railways, Mining, and Oil and Gas Industry.

One of their better known drones is “Vedansh UAV”, a Micro category class Quadcopter Drone, made exclusively for Surveying & Mapping purpose. It uses a dual battery pack technology for greater endurance during the flight. It is built of Carbon composite material keeping its weight factor in consideration. It has integrated in it for Superior mapping accuracy with indigenous dual-frequency RTK/PPK system (a GPS correction technology).

Overall it can be stated that Drones lead to reduction in field crews and decrease risk with highly detailed data. Increased revenue, investment through additional analysis of value-added products, made possible from high-resolution imagery. Key Customers include Governments, Companies working on Agriculture, Construction, Surveillance,Traffic Management etc.

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Innovator's Vista

Digital Transformation of the physical infrastructure & assets through IoT Solution

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Innovator's Vista

Digital Transformation of the physical infrastructure & assets through IoT Solution

Digital transformation has become one of the most important factors for all businesses, from the small to the enterprise. It requires the incorporation of computer-based technologies into areas of a business like products, processes and strategies so as to change the way organisations engage with customers and as within.  It leads to reinvention of all facets of an organization, from supply chains, workflows, to employee skill sets.

Connectivity is a fundamental aspect of digital transformation, a concept of Connected Enterprises has emerged that involves facilitating a deeper level of collaboration among people and technological operations using internet of things. A connected enterprise is able to access more insightful data in real time, incorporating machine learning algorithms immediately to analyze data that leads to a more informed and better decision making process.

Connectivity gives real-time visibility into the inner workings of any facility thus reduction in work-related mishaps, overall increase in operational output, and cuts down on unnecessary expenses. It also takes care of issue like data siloes i.e. collection of data held by one group that is not easily or fully accessible by other groups in the same organization, and spots flaws within before it becomes problematic.

A startup, Resonant, is working on Digital Transformation of the physical infrastructure & assets through IoT Solution. The company has developed an in house solution named RUSH Stack (Resonant Universal Software & Hardware) for Edge Computing, Cloud Platform and On-Premises Solutions. It promises customized control across the enterprise especially for critical assets based on events, workflows through Cognitive Automation.

With manufacturing sector adopting IP based products and solutions to optimize production tools offered by the company, Cognitive Engagement (information flow) & Cognitive Automation (event-based controls) across different units in industries (or across different geographical locations) can help enterprises with real time information and control with the help of IoT and IP networks.

Similarly for Smart Buildings that use technology like Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, building management systems, artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality and robotics, the company provides IoT-Based Monitoring & Control Solutions that claim to cover all aspects from Real Time Monitoring & Visualisation to Cognitive Automation, and thus reduces operational costs, maintenance costs, optimizes asset utilisation & life, and manages energy footprint.

For MSMEs the company offers MICS,a specially designed for a budget-friendly, modular deployment wherein large amount of data is collected from various sources, analysed & centralised for better data visualisation for critical decision making. And offers benefits like Increased Operational Efficiency, Reduced Maintenance Costs & Optimised Energy Footprint are achieved through various features of our solution.

For Solar OEM’s: Remote Monitoring Solution — the company offers solution with data logging hardware and backend platform for monitoring and control of solar assets. It claims to have more than 2500 units deployed PAN India and more than 300 units exported with customized requirements based on client preferences. This would help companies optimize plant performance by reducing unplanned downtime, reduce operations cost and improve revenues by better generation

Resonant has also got DIPP & DPIIT recognition for its products and solutions and has been honoured by MEITY for design, development and deployment of indigenous end to end loT Solutions (Hardware & Software Stacks complete made in India).

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Innovator's Vista

AI-driven health tech platform optimising care management

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Innovator's Vista

AI-driven health tech platform optimising care management

With the increased digitization in healthcare, immense amount of data is being generated, as a result data analytics and artificial intelligence are increasingly being applied within this field. Several types of AI are already being employed by payers and providers of care, and life sciences companies. These advanced technologies are transforming many aspects like providing high quality patient care, responding to real-time situations and saving more lives on the clinical front; and optimising the use of resources, improving the processes and services and reducing the costs on the operational and financial front.

Patient care management, a program that involves comprehensive health services to assist patients in managing their health, is also one of the fields where these advanced technologies can play a significant role. A B2B healthtech startup, HEAPS, is already working on this. The Startup provides SaaS and Platform that leverages data analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning and creates care management systems.

Care management systems for insurers, hospitals, corporates and patients:

Heaps, working with the aim to revolutionise healthcare delivery and payment models at a global level, has created care management systems for insurers, hospitals, corporates and patients.

For Corporates, the company helps in improving the quality of care and support health care support to employees while reducing group policy premiums. It ensures comprehensive health care for employees and their dependents with 24/7 support and data on call for employees as well as corporations to pre-empt future health and resource risks. Heaps also provides personalised health care plans for the mental and physical well-being of employees, thus  can improved employee loyalty and satisfaction. The startup has also designed a “Risk Severity Index” that helps patients understand their health better and prevent complications and thus reduces hospitalisations.

For Hospitals, it can help in reducing 30 day readmissions and preponement of discharge by analysis of areas of concern. This leads to increase in patient satisfaction and stickiness. It can also result in better performance by analysis of complaints and satisfaction scores at a Specialty & Doctor level. It helps in generating revenue for Hospitals through Cross-speciality referrals, Home care Nursing, Physiotherapy, Diagnostic and other ancillary medical services. There is also a “Health Compliance & Risk Management (HCRM)” program that provides proactive outreach, personalised care management and real-time risk assessment to improve patient outcomes. 

For Insurers, the startup helps in reducing their cost of hospitalisation and rehospitalisation by actively monitoring patients’ needs and reduce unwarranted hospitalisation and health care costs. By leveraging past analysed data any avoidable deterioration of health of the patient can also be predicted and can be followed by adequate action.

Funding:

Founded in the year 2020, the company is expanding its presence in India, with offices in Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru. Heaps has also been successful in making inroads into the North American market and plans to enter Europe and the MENA region this year. The company has also raised a Series A fund of $7.4 million in January 2022 and is backed by well known investors.

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Enterprise Innovation Innovator's Vista

Real time collaboration tool for Businesses

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Enterprise Innovation Innovator's Vista

Real time collaboration tool for Businesses

The Covid-19 pandemic has had tremendous impact on workplace culture. The concept of Distributed Workforce came into being as a result employers had to adapt and support mass remote working at astonishing speed. The modern workforce is distributed in different locations and even in different time zones therefore there is an increased need for coordination to speed up the work processes.

There has been an accelerated adoption of digital tools by Enterprises, specifically Collaboration tools that help teams and groups work together toward a common goal. It involves the use of the Internet, or
some other form of technology enables sharing information with one another. Some examples include Chat apps, Video Conferencing Tools, Project Management apps and File sharing programs.

Chat based collaboration apps have a big impact on productivity of an organisation, as they are less formal than emails. These allow individuals to communicate instantly through direct chats for quick conversations and follow-ups. There are also provision for private channels for focussed team or project discussion and public channels for conversations around shared interests.

Video conferencing platforms have also become significant for enterprises’ strategies. They are also an important factor for establishing a competitive advantage by changing the way employees work. Allowing Face-to-face communication allow teams to work together or with customers and clients effectively, irrespective of their location.

Finding and sharing files allows information to flow freely among everyone at the organization. This allows team members to share files and every member can have access to all team’s knowledge and discussions, no matter who shared them or when.

Project Management app helps organisations manage multiple projects in one common platform. It provides visibility of the progress of each project in one integrated system which ensures prioritizing tasks that are more important and team members to be regularly updated with changes in projects.

Workflow management tool is another collaboration tool that enables teams to streamline and speed up their routine business processes for optimal efficiency. There are options to share tasks with built-in shared “To-dos” which makes managing workflows easier.

Collaboration Tools thus increase coordination and speed up the work processes and enhance the productivity of the workforce. The global team collaboration software market is projected to grow significantly as there is an increasing trend among companies regarding accepting intelligent meeting solutions for remote working.




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Enterprise Innovation Innovator's Vista

Blending AI with human agents for customer experience automation

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Enterprise Innovation Innovator's Vista

Blending AI with human agents for customer experience automation

New generation of consumers look to engage and resolve issues in real-time, 24/7. Businesses have no other choice but to transform their customer and employee experiences to be omnichannel, intelligent, personalised, that too, at scale.

Customer Experience Automation let businesses to build the toolset that makes the most sense for their model, then orchestrate personalized experiences across.

Natural Learning Processing (NLP) Engine forms the core component that interprets what users say at any given time and converts that language to structured inputs the system can process.

Businesses can deliver on-demand fulfilment by blending AI and human intelligence Thus business-to-consumer interactions of every enterprise across the world, can be made intuitive, personal, and real-time. As AI offloads simple, repetitive, monotonous tasks from customer service agents — letting them concentrate on complex questions or allowing them to better connect with the customer.

The hybrid Agent + AI model, the next natural progression is towards bot-initiated conversations. The scope of these messages includes promotions, campaigns, back-in-stock notifications, abandoned cart reminders, etc., to proactively reach customers.

With the advent of DIY no-coding bots, it is rapidly becoming an option for small startups and individuals to try their hand at building bots with basic functionalities.

Blending AI with human agents allows enterprises improves customer service that leads to more customer satisfaction, agent satisfaction, agent productivity and increased customer retention.

These customer experience automation platforms can find application in sectors such as BFSI, Retail & Ecommerce, Telecom, Education etc.




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Innovator's Vista Mobility

AI driven solution to assess road network

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Innovator's Vista Mobility

AI driven solution to assess road network

Transportation sector is one of the crucial sectors for global economy and road infrastructure is the backbone of the transport network. Road networks have a direct and substantial impact on people’s lives, and thus it needs for regular maintenance and exhaustive monitoring.

The conventional methods for road condition assessment are labor intensive and often fail to meet the present requirements due to the vast area of road networks to inspected within a limited timeframe. Usage of sensors by automation of road damage detection using high-performance sensors is also taking place at some levels but these options are often costly and sometimes unaffordable.

In this context, using AI driven solutions to assess road network for an automated solution can help in easy and early identification of road defects. It involves usage of technologies like Computer Vision, DeepTech, and Machine Learning.

With the advent of Smartphones and Object Detection techniques in AI, these AI techniques are being used to perform road damage inspection. Computer vision AI software extracts road and street level data and identifies information such as road health, street informatory/warning signage and assets.

A Startup, Roadmetrics.AI, is working on this use case. Users need to simply mount smartphone with a customized data collection mobile app above vehicle’s dashboard which captures an image every 10 feet with the entire view of the road. The image data capture starts automatically with the trip and and stops at the end. A specific route can be selected with a targeted approach.

The image data then is sent into a dedicated system, where algorithms—trained with hundreds of thousands of image data points ensuring a high accuracy and constantly improving— can look for damage to the road surface image by image, classify various stages of road pavement damage. Damages are recorded and transferred again to the app. The privacy is also taken care as sensitive information is automatically removed according to GDPR compliance using customised algorithm.

This approach results in considerable savings in time and resources spent by customers in defect identification. Road defects such as cracks and potholes that are a major problem and result in billions of dollars in repair and maintenance can be accurately detected and updated databases of recorded structural damages can be maintained for further maintenance. Some of the key customers for such products are Governments, Road development authorities, Private parties operating in infrastructure sector.