A machine-vision startup backed by BMW has developed a digital fingerprinting expertise that permits automakers and suppliers to trace and authenticate elements throughout provide chains and distribution programs.
Alitheon, of Bellevue, Wash., has developed a system to authenticate any product utilizing the minute floor traits created throughout manufacturing.
Each bodily object is totally different as a result of the manufacturing course of has built-in tolerances, Alitheon CEO Roei Ganzarski advised sibling publication Automotive Information.
Alitheon’s expertise creates for merchandise what fingerprints are for individuals — a singular identifier.
As soon as Alitheon’s optical synthetic intelligence system registers what’s known as a FeaturePrint, the merchandise might be recognized to confirm authenticity, decide the place and time of origin, detect tampering, measure put on and determine counterfeit merchandise.
Alitheon has raised $21 million (all figures in USD), together with an undisclosed quantity from BMW’s enterprise capital arm. The corporate’s purchasers embrace two automakers and at the very least three Tier 1 suppliers, Ganzarski mentioned.
The expertise combines machine imaginative and prescient and “refined math,” he mentioned.
It was developed by a crew that invented mail studying machines that may convert handwritten addresses into bar codes for sorting.
BMW i Ventures accomplice Marcus Behrendt described Alitheon’s expertise as “groundbreaking.”
It will probably convey a “new degree of belief to provide chains that doesn’t presently exist,” Behrendt mentioned in a press release.
The authentication course of begins with an off-the-shelf digicam or cell phone taking a high-resolution picture of the product coming off the manufacturing line.
That info is transformed right into a digital fingerprint and registered within the firm’s database for a small payment.
Product verification is so simple as importing a photograph of the merchandise to Alitheon’s cell app, then checking to see if the FeaturePrint is registered.
“We do not let you know if an element is actual or not,” Ganzarski mentioned. “However we will inform if the half was registered an hour in the past or a yr in the past.”
In contrast to product serial numbers and bar codes, the FeaturePrint is tougher to tamper with.
“If I’ve your fingerprint on file, I do not want you to put on a badge to inform me who you might be. I simply want your fingerprint,” Ganzarski mentioned.
The software program depends on 5,000 “factors of curiosity” to create the FeaturePrint for a single brake pad.
“So even when I solely have half a brake pad, or the wheel is hiding three-quarters of that brake pad, I’ve sufficient factors of curiosity on what’s left to authenticate and determine it,” Ganzarski mentioned.
The event might assist clear up an costly downside — elements counterfeiting.
A examine by Frontier Economics estimated that counterfeiting and piracy’s complete international financial worth might attain $2.3 trillion this yr.
“Assuring product authenticity and provenance is a worldwide downside that’s extremely pervasive, from firm provide chains to authorities entities, to particular person shoppers,” Ganzarski mentioned.
The expertise additionally permits automakers to shortly determine which autos have defective elements, serving to scale back the price and complexity of a security recall.
“Think about 4 machines making the identical half, and you discover out that one of many machines wasn’t calibrated correctly,” Ganzarski mentioned. “How are you aware which elements got here off of that machine, to recall solely these automobiles?”
Alitheon’s expertise additionally permits service techs to shortly determine counterfeit elements earlier than putting in them on a car.
“There is no approach for the mechanic to know a brake pad is counterfeit from only a serial quantity,” Ganzarski mentioned.