Bay Vision - Spring 2018

IntelinAir is a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence company that gives insight to farmers about the state of their fields and farms. They do this by processing aerial images that are taken in the multispectral domain and analysing them several times over the duration of the entire season to identify potential problems and present them to the farmers in a way that is easy to digest and easy to take action. Ara Nefian , CTO and founder of IntelinAir, tells us that they specialise in corn and soybean. He says that corn, soybean and weed together cover the vast majority of raw vegetation in the world and IntelinAir’s work is helping to solve “ one of mankind’s biggest problems ”. He adds that by 2050, the Earth’s population is expected to reach 9 billion people, so their method is not just efficient, but vital. There are many companies that focus on specialty crops for which the profit margins may be higher, but admirably, IntelinAir are looking at large acreage for the most commonly-planted vegetation, because then they really solve an important problem for the world. Ara says: “We’re focusing on things that in my opinion really matter and we understand that we might not have the best profit breaker.” The IntelinAir method analyses multispectral images using visible, near infrared and thermal cameras. They create large maps that cover the areas they fly over, then for each of these maps they respond to individual fields and do their in-depth analysis. Some of the specific problems they look for are anomalous changes in the fields, anomalies in areas where vegetation didn’t emerge, the presence of weeds, and the presence of water patches before the emergence of the crop. Finding areas which need additional irrigation is also in their plan. Their analysis is driven almost entirely by the farmers’ needs. They have a large sales and customer satisfaction team that is in constant touch with the farmers. The farmers provide feedback and IntelinAir build a product for the following season that is closer to what the farmers need. The algorithms that they develop are mostly influenced directly by the farmers because, as Ara points out, “ They are our customers and they probably know much better than us what is important and what the problem is .” In terms of computer vision, Ara tells us they do a lot of work in image segmentation, statistical modelling of aerial images, artificial intelligence, and convolutional neural networks . Surface segmentation is one of the more difficult problems the team face, particularly doing it outside with so many variations to illumination conditions – cloudy days vs clear days – instead of within a confined lab environment. Ara says their strength comes from how they manage to overcome Bay Vision 22 Boston Vision IntelinAir “They are our customers and they probably know much better than us what is important and what the problem is.”