THE ROBOT WITH HUMAN-LIKE VISION

CynLr is a robotics research start-up that is combining a form of machine learning called reinforced learning and machine vision to create a visual object intelligence platform

- Kruti Bharadva

What do you get when you put together two intelligent minds together? Brilliance of course.

The brainchild of Nikhil Ramaswamy and Gokul NA, CynLr is a robotics research start-up that is combining a form of machine learning called reinforced learning and machine vision to create a visual object intelligence platform. CynLr’s work allows manufacturing companies and industrial units to deploy robotic arms that can see, recognise and manipulate objects in random unstructured environments, which makes it easier for such systems to be deployed in unconventional facilities.

A BRIEF HISTORY

Gokul and Nikhil met when they joined as applications engineers at National Instruments (NI), a US-headquartered leader in test, measurement and automation. At NI, they took different paths – Nikhil ended up becoming a Key Accounts Manager responsible for $1.5 million in annual sales from Key accounts like GE, Honeywell and Bosch; while Gokul became a Machine Vision and Embedded Specialist for large geography including Eastern Europe, India and South-East Asia. It was at NI that they got access to study the problems faced in manufacturing automation and the gaps in machine vision technology.

They discovered that whenever these machine vision principles built for identification were applied for more dynamic applications like robotics, they were consistently failing. That’s when they identified that there are concrete gaps in the vision technology for robotic guidance and decided to step out in 2015 to solve this problem. Subsequently, the founders consulted for and delivered over 30 customised vision-guided robot solutions that were previously unsolved by incumbents, to select manufacturers like Sansera Engineering, Timken Bearing and GE X-Rays.