Why AI software companies are betting on small data to spot manufacturing defects

To the uninitiated, a tiny stain on several yards of car seat upholstery or a minuscule gas bubble on the surface of an industrial oil pipe might seem like an insignificant imperfection. But factory inspectors are always on the lookout for these sorts of defects, because they can create serious slowdowns in time-sensitive manufacturing production schedules. Cameras and computer vision software have been used to spot product flaws in manufacturing facilities for decades, but today companies including Landing AI and Mariner are helping take defect detection to the next level with AI software. Rather than offering off-the-shelf AI, these companies are betting that manufacturers want highly customized algorithmic models to monitor for product defects. And they have another selling point that flies in the face of what we know about most big data-hungry AI systems: Their models work using very small datasets.