Sept 10 - Visual AI in Manufacturing and Robotics (Day 1)

Join us for the first in a series of virtual events to hear talks from experts on the latest developments at the intersection of Visual AI, Manufacturing and Robotics.

Date and Time

Sept 10 at 9 AM Pacific

Location

Virtual. Register for the Zoom!

Detecting the Unexpected: Practical Approaches to Anomaly Detection in Visual Data

Anomaly detection is one of computer vision's most exciting and essential challenges today. From spotting subtle defects in manufacturing to identifying edge cases in model behavior, it is one of computer vision's most exciting and crucial challenges. In this session, we’ll do a hands-on walkthrough using the MVTec AD dataset, showcasing real-world workflows for data curation, exploration, and model evaluation. We’ll also explore the power of embedding visualizations and similarity searches to uncover hidden patterns and surface anomalies that often go unnoticed.

This session is packed with actionable strategies to help you make sense of your data and build more robust, reliable models. Join us as we connect the dots between data, models, and real-world deployment—alongside other experts driving innovation in anomaly detection.

About the Speaker

Paula Ramos has a PhD in Computer Vision and Machine Learning, with more than 20 years of experience in the technological field. She has been developing novel integrated engineering technologies, mainly in Computer Vision, robotics, and Machine Learning applied to agriculture, since the early 2000s in Colombia.

Scaling Synthetic Data for Industrial AI: From CAD to Model in Hours

This talk explores how we generate high-performance computer vision datasets from CAD—without real-world images or manual labeling. We’ll walk through our synthetic data pipeline, including CPU-optimized defect simulation, material variation, and lighting workflows that scale to thousands of renders per part. While Blender plays a role, our focus is on how industrial data (like STEP files) and procedural generation unlock fast, flexible training sets for manufacturing QA, even on modest hardware. If you're working at the edge of 3D, automation, and vision AI—this is for you!

About the Speaker

Matt Puchalski is the founder and CEO of Bucket Robotics, A Y Combinator backed startup building self-serve computer vision systems for manufacturing. Previously, he led robotics reliability at Argo AI and helped build and deploy autonomous vehicles at Stack AV and Uber ATG.

Swarm Intelligence: Solving Complex Industrial Optimization in Seconds

Manufacturing and logistics companies face increasingly complex operational challenges that traditional AI and human planning struggle to solve effectively. Collide Technology harnesses Swarm Intelligence algorithms to transform intractable problems—like scheduling hundreds or thousands of maintenance employees while simultaneously optimizing production capacity, inventory levels, and cross-sector resource allocation—into solutions delivered in seconds rather than weeks.

Unlike rigid Operations Research approaches that require specialized expertise and expensive implementations, our platform democratizes industrial optimization by making sophisticated decision-making accessible to any factory or logistics operation. We deliver holistic, data-driven solutions that optimize across multiple business entities and sectors simultaneously, adapting to real-world constraints and evolving operational needs.

About the Speaker

Frederick Gertz, PhD has worked in AI for the manufacturing space for over a decade delivering data science insights for the medical and pharmaceutical manufacturing space. Prior to that he worked in nanotechnology with a focus on bio-physics and nanomagnetics with his dissertation research on Magnonic Holographic Devices being named as a runner-up for 2014 Physics Breakthrough of the Year by Physics World.