Success for mobile phone microscope

South Australian company GoMicro is enjoying great success with its versatile artificial intelligence microscope being used in a kit to diagnose leishmaniasis in war-torn nations, on farms to identify pests, and in schools as a teaching tool. It is also being tested to grade tuna for consumption in Sri Lanka.

The GoMicro technology combines a mobile phone microscope attachment with an AI suite that is able to recognised patterns and objects with a fraction of the number of photos usually required.

GoMicro, which was established with assistance from New Venture Institute at Flinders University, has solved the problem of bad lighting that often hinders photo databases by optically engineering the lens and building a diffuser into the tech.

GoMicro founder and CEO Sivam Krish says the company’s AI microscopy tool has impressed an investor in Sri Lanka because it had the ability to grade seafood, such as tuna, with a database of hundreds of photos, instead of tens of thousands.

“We now have an investment from a star investor Jeevan Gnanam in Sri Lanka, so we formed a fully owned subsidiary there to do our software development,” says Mr Krish, who has expanded the company with help from Flinders University graduate Jarrad Law  (BCompSc ‘16).

Mr Gnanam introduced GoMicro to John Keells Holdings PLC, the largest conglomerate in Sri Lanka, and the owner of supermarket chains.

“Their supermarket chain has an extraordinary commitment to deliver fresh food. They procure directly from farmers through five collection centres and put it in shops with 24 hours,” says Mr Krish. “We actually talked to them to help them assess vegetable quality, but tuna assessment was a bigger challenge.

“While it is easy to differentiate really good tuna from really bad tuna, it is difficult to differentiate good tuna from not-too-good tuna. It’s a 12-year apprenticeship to train a tuna expert, so this is a problem in the edge of human assessment.”

GoMicro solves this problem by allowing warehouse staff to simply use their phones to take a photo of the tuna, before the AI-supported app then quickly determines a grade so they can label it and send it to the appropriate store.

GoMicro uses advanced manufacturing technologies to manufacture the microscopes and the Tensorflow AI engine developed by Google to make predictions.

The technology is being tested at Colombo supermarkets before a planned roll out to the chain’s 100 stores in Sri Lanka.

Mr Krish said the AI system could easily be adapted to other seafood as well as fruit and vegetables and their business plan was to sell subscriptions to the system.

“We offer 10,000 clicks a month for US$100, and the device comes free with the subscription,” Mr Krish said.

Posted in
Uncategorised