SPEEDCARGO, Microsoft team up to disrupt air cargo and logistics with advanced 3D vision technologies

Singapore-based SPEEDCARGO Technologies announces collaboration with Microsoft’s Azure Depth Platform program to disrupt the air cargo and logistics industry with advanced 3D vision technologies. In this collaboration, SPEEDCARGO leverages advanced 3D sensing technologies by Microsoft in its artificial intelligence and robotics solutions for digitization, optimisation and automation in the air cargo and logistics space.

SPEEDCARGO offers a suite of robotics and AI technologies for optimizing yield and increasing productivity in the logistics industry. Its suite of products for digitization, optimization, and automation reduces revenue leakage, maximizes operational efficiency, and improves productivity and business performance.

SPEEDCARGO’s solutions are being deployed in the $116 billion airfreight industry. This industry has been traditionally slow in adoption of new technologies, with the current efforts being largely focussed on ensuring free flow of documentation across different stakeholders. The next technology evolution phase is a transition towards capturing digital information of physical cargo, to enable optimization within individual organisations and across operating networks. SPEEDCARGO is uniquely poised to help drive this industry transformation across warehousing, freight forwarding, trucking, ground handling and logistics.

“The global pandemic has accelerated the need for transformation in the logistics space. With the number of operational flights being reduced at a rate of ~75% relative to pre-pandemic time and cargo volumes at nearly pre-pandemic levels, there is an immediate need for optimization. SPEEDCARGO is working closely with Microsoft to build a digital twin of the physical cargo, provide critical information and the building blocks for a digitized operational model,” said Suraj Nair, Founder of SPEEDCARGO Technologies.

Microsoft’s Azure Depth Platform aims to democratize cloud connected 3D vision via an ecosystem of semiconductors, independent hardware vendors (IHVs), independent software vendors (ISVs) and system integrators (Sis) building cameras, 3D vision skills and services. Combining Microsoft Time of Flight (ToF) depth sensing technology with the Azure intelligent Edge and intelligent cloud platforms is disrupting computer vision applications across multiple industries.

“3D sensing is the next wave of computer vision, which helps ISVs differentiate and disrupt their target markets. Our collaboration with SPEEDCARGO showcases the benefits for ISVs to use Microsoft 3D sensing in conjunction with Azure cloud platform,” said Cyrus Bamji, Partner Hardware Architect at Microsoft.

Time of Flight, according to Bamji, is the process of measuring the distance to objects by measuring the time it takes for a signal sent by an observer to make the round trip from the observer to the object and back. Bamji co-founded a ToF company called Canesta which was acquired by Microsoft in 2010.

Microsoft has made a very strategic intend to make its ToF technology accessible outside Microsoft to enable camera makers, solution providers, and ISVs to drive innovative 3D sensing capabilities across multiple industries and scenarios. These include robotics, IoT, logistics, factory automation, retail, fitness, healthcare and more. The partnership with SPEEDCARGO is Microsoft’s endeavour to drive the next level of automation and robotics in the logistics industry.

SPEEDCARGO’s three modular solutions: CARGO EYE, CARGO MIND and CARGO ARM, form a suite of solutions using intelligent systems that provide accurate dimensioning, digitisation of cargo, planning and optimising of operations that enable automation for the stakeholders in the logistics value chain. The adoption of this automation has helped an initial customer with a 20 to 25 percent increase in revenue from underutilised assets.

SPEEDCARGO has developed the CARGO EYE product with Microsoft’s cutting-edge Time-of-Flight sensing technology. CARGO MIND is already available on Azure for scaling in a fast, secure, and reliable manner, using IoT Edge, IoT Hub, Container Services, Data services and Azure Active Directory. SPEEDCARGO will further expand using Azure’s AI ecosystem to develop intelligent data driven services for the entire logistics domain.

SPEEDCARGO, founded in 2015, is funded by the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) and mentored by the Singapore Airfreight ecosystem, that include SATS, Singapore Airlines, dnata, DHL and Singapore Air Cargo Agents Association (SAAA), to develop a proof-of-concept technology for automation.

In 2018 SPEEDCARGO became one of the first projects in Singapore to obtain the Central Gap Fund from National Research Foundation (Prime Minister's Office), to focus on commercialisation and go-to-market. Last year it was incorporated as a Singapore based deep-tech start-up and entered into a strategic partnership with SATS, dnata and Gudel, a manufacturer of high-precision machine components and a provider of sophisticated automation solutions.