Microsoft, manufacturers of computers, has gone a step higher in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies with the unveiling, recently, of a new product that can perform a multitude of functions.
The new product, Azure Percept, is a platform of hardware and services that aims to simplify how customers can use Azure AI technologies on the edge. These include taking advantage of Azure cloud offerings such as device management, AI model development and analytics.
In today’s world, millions of scenarios are becoming possible with a combination of artificial intelligence and computing on the edge. Standalone edge devices can take advantage of AI tools for things like translating text or recognizing images without having to constantly access cloud computing capabilities.
Through this combination too, other scenarios such as having elevators that respond to voice commands, cameras that notify store managers when to restock shelves and video streams that keep tabs on everything from cash register lines to parking space availability have become possible.
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“The goal of the new offering is to give customers a single, end-to-end system, from the hardware to the AI capabilities, that just works without requiring a lot of technical knowhow,” explained Roanne Sones, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s edge and platform group.
The Azure Percept platform includes a development kit with an intelligent camera, Azure Percept Vision. There’s also a ‘getting started’ experience called Azure Percept Studio that guides customers with or without a lot of coding expertise or experience through the entire AI lifecycle.
If, for instance, a company wants to set up a system to automatically identify irregular products on a production line so workers can pull those items off before shipping, Azure Percept is the way to go.
Sones explained further that Azure Percept Vision and Azure Percept Audio, which ship separately from the development kit, connect to Azure services in the cloud and come with embedded hardware-accelerated AI modules that enable speech and vision AI at the edge,
This could also be done during times when the device isn’t connected to the internet. That’s useful for scenarios in which the device needs to make lightning-fast calculations without taking the time to connect to the cloud, or in places where there isn’t always reliable internet connectivity, such as on a factory floor or in a location with spotty service.
“The Azure Percept platform makes it easy for anyone to deploy artificial intelligence on the edge. Devices include a Trusted Platform Module (centre), Azure Percept Audio (left) and Azure Percept Vision (right),” Sones assured.
In addition to announcing hardware, Microsoft says it is working with third-party silicon and equipment manufacturers to build an ecosystem of intelligent edge devices that are certified to run on the Azure Percept platform, Sones said.
“We’ve started with the two most common AI workloads, vision and voice, sight and sound, and we’ve given out that blueprint so that manufacturers can take the basics of what we’ve started,” she said, adding, “but they can envision it in any kind of responsible form factor to cover a pattern of the world.”
The goal of the Azure Percept platform is to simplify the process of developing, training and deploying edge AI solutions, making it easier for more customers to take advantage of these kinds of offerings, according to Moe Tanabian, a Microsoft vice president and general manager of the Azure edge and devices group.
He explained that most successful edge AI implementations today require engineers to design and build devices, plus data scientists to build and train AI models to run on those devices. Engineering and data science expertise are typically unique sets of skills held by different groups of highly trained people.
