Object Detection Apps and Software for Business

Object detection is a foundational computer vision technique that locates and identifies specific types of objects in an image. The types of objects can be anything from humans to vehicles to very specific items like brands of chips or types of building materials.

Applications that leverage object detection are transformative for businesses, enabling them to automate and optimize key processes. From identifying high-traffic product zones in retail environments to ensuring workers in manufacturing are wearing the correct PPE in hazardous areas, object detection AI provides actionable insights that drive better decision-making across a wide range of industries.

alwaysAI’s end-to-end computer vision platform enables the development of powerful object detection applications. It encompasses every step of the app building process all the way from data collection and annotation to model training, deployment, and analytics. Whether you want to build smart object detection applications yourself with the platform or have our team of expert engineers craft customized solutions for you, we have you covered.

What are Object Detection Apps and How Do They Work?

How does object detection work? Object detection apps utilize AI models to identify humans or objects in real-time, leveraging both AI object recognition and image classification. The process starts with data collection from your unique environment, where objects of interest are annotated by drawing bounding boxes around them.

Next, deep learning computer vision models are trained using large amounts of annotated image data, teaching them to recognize specific objects. These models learn to classify objects based on probability scores, proposing what class an object belongs to and defining its boundaries with x-y coordinates and height and length values.

Once training is complete, the object detection application can be built and deployed to either the edge or cloud leveraging your existing cameras. The data gained provides valuable business insights that empower stakeholders to respond effectively to events in real time.

alwaysAI streamlines the process of building and deploying smart object detection apps because it allows all of these steps to take place within one comprehensive platform. 

The dataset building process can notoriously be time and labor intensive. But, with our generative AI capabilities, the data collection and annotation stages are expedited. For example, with semi-supervised learning and auto-annotation, the annotation process can be reduced up to 80%, shifting from a time-consuming, manual process to a simpler validation task. With synthetic data, digitally-generated images can augment existing datasets, which is instrumental when training models to detect dangerous or uncommon events. Furthermore, prescriptive analytics analyze the rich data collected to give you recommendations for new changes within your operations.

Finally, our robust model training and evaluation, remote deployment and management, and customized analytics features greatly simplify a very complex task.

Advanced Applications for Object Detection Apps and Software Solutions

Here are some real-world examples of object detection projects in action, allowing businesses to make improvements instantly, rather than days or weeks later.

Chart describing various applications of object detection.

By leveraging alwaysAI's platform, developers and businesses can quickly build and deploy object detection apps tailored to their specific needs. The platform offers pre-trained models, easy integration with existing systems, and scalable deployment options, making it accessible to users with varying levels of technical expertise. This enables organizations across industries to harness the power of AI object detection and drive innovation in their respective fields.

Computer vision detecting machines on a construction site.

How to Build Your Own Object Detection Starter App with alwaysAI

alwaysAI's platform makes it easy to build and deploy AI object detection apps by providing pre-trained models, a user-friendly dashboard, and a simple API for customization. With just a few lines of code and some configuration, you can create transformative object detection applications tailored to your specific needs.

alwaysAI’s starter applications greatly expedite the app building process, giving you a solid foundation to begin testing and deploying more customized solutions for your use case. You can also build and train your own object detection application with the platform or have alwaysAI build applications from the ground-up for you.

It is easy to get a simple object detector starter app up and running. Starter applications use your computer’s camera, making it easy to test the app, and they use preset COCO datasets for common items you’d want to detect. The first step is to get an app running with some default settings, here are the steps:

1. Install the alwaysAI tools on your computer.
2. Log into the alwaysAI dashboard and create a new project by clicking the "New Project" button.
3. Choose "Object Detection" as the starting template, enter a project name, and click "Create Project".
4. Open a terminal and run the alwaysAI CLI commands listed in the “Run Your App” section to configure, install, and start your app.
5. Open your browser and enter the URL printed in the terminal.

The default model detects objects in the COCO dataset, including many common objects such as people, animals, household items, and vehicles. If you want to change the model, pick a different model from the model catalog or upload your own. For example, if you want to run on an NVIDIA GPU, you can select alwaysai/yolo_x, which can be converted to TensorRT at runtime and run at a high inference rate. Add the model to your app by running aai app models add alwaysai/yolo_x. In `app.py`, change the `edgeiq.ObjectDetection()` instantiation to the new model name.

When you run `aai app install` and `aai app start`, your app will be using the new model! ​​Building an object detection app with alwaysAI is a straightforward process thanks to the platform’s ease of use and flexibility.

More resources:

Tutorial: How to Detect People Using Object Detection

GitHub: Object Detector

Frequently Asked Questions about Object Detection Apps