Spotting visual patterns

The current applications for Brainchip's technology are based on its ability to recognise visual patterns, for example from security cameras, and spot anomalies or problems.

In the casino it spots when a dealer makes a potentially expensive mistake, but security agencies and airports are investigating its potential to stop crimes or even terrorist attacks in their tracks.

At least two European airports, including Bordeaux in France, are using Brainchip for perimeter detection to help identify intrusions. It has also already been deployed by a major, undisclosed, European police department to watch people coming through subway stations on a plethora of video cameras, in order to match faces with lists of wanted suspects.

"We can recognise if there's an individual loitering around somewhere they shouldn't be, if they're approaching an airplane or if they leave a piece of luggage or backpack unattended," Mr DiNardo said.

Founder and chief technology officer of BrainChip, Peter Van Der Made, has spent more than a decade investigating how the brain works and working out how to synthesise it digitally.

"Until now, all that video is good for is after something horrible happens, they've got some footage to try and go back and figure out what happened. Our goal is to try and provide that preventative alert, so that security can jump on it and prevent bad things happening."

Brainchip is also being investigated by a New York state school district to monitor security vision, and alert security staff to breaches and potential gun attacks.


Range of uses

Aside from security, Mr DiNardo said the technology has a huge range of uses for industry, and Brainchip is believed to be close to announcing a deal with a multibillion-dollar industrial services company, which would be able to use its technology to monitor operations in a way not possible before with human supervision.

"With a standard definition or high definition camera, we can watch an assembly being put together and can see when something is not happening correctly before they build the part," he said.

One of Las Vegas' largest casinos has rolled out a BrainChip-based product to monitor its dealers for errors, and it will soon announce a new deal with MGM.

"We can do a visual inspection in real time just like we do in surveillance or the casino gaming application, and flag it preventatively rather than the company having to figure out what part went wrong when it doesn't work."

Brainchip is far from the only technology company talking up its AI smarts in recent times, but Mr DiNardo said giants such as IBM, Microsoft, Intel or Google were not approaching the issue from the same perspective.

He said Brainchip's founder and chief technology officer, Peter Van Der Made, had spent more than a decade investigating how the brain works and working out how to synthesise it digitally.

"It's always a bit audacious to say we're the only folks that are pursuing this approach. But frankly, we don't see that others have focused on that plasticity part of the problem," Mr DiNardo said.


The iCetana system utilises computer vision, machine learning, adaptive algorithms and pattern recognition to establish "normal patterns of motion" for surveillance cameras. Paul Jeffers

"You can never ignore a potential competitor threat, but I think what most lack is a mechanism, either in hardware or software, to do autonomous learning of an event."

Explaining technology's potential

Since hitting a high of 31¢ in October, shares in Brainchip have hovered in the 20¢ range, closing at 19.5¢ at the end of last week to give it a market capitalisation of $87 million.

Mr DiNardo said part of his job was to explain the potential of the business to investors, without them feeling the need to get bogged down in the minutiae of highly complex technology.

"I hope that they never feel the need to really understand what a spiking neural network is," he said.

"I mean that not in a negative way, but what really matters is what applications can benefit from a technology, in this case we happen to have snap or spiking neural adaptive processor, but I don't think that they need to care about that."