Tech Updates

Published on Oct 14, 2019

Cloudflight opened its doors in Linz “By showing our customers what other things we do, we show them what other things are possible.”

We at Cloudflight don’t keep our ideas and expertise just to ourselves: we share it with people who are not connected to the IT world as much as we are, and that’s why we organize Open Door Days (ODD) regularly. Our last ODD event took place in Frankfurt and focused on Emerging Technologies, Mobility, Space, Infrastructure and Custom Software Solutions.

At the ODD on October 10th in Linz, in the heart of the Digital Future Space, discussions lasted all afternoon and into the evening. It was humbling that our guests wanted to get to know us: who we are, how we work and which projects we are working on in the form of live-demos presented by our own specialists. We told them about our upcoming international events in November — Perspective and Catalysts Coding Contest — and also presented The Cat Way (how we work) as well as our Digital Future Space (where we work).

Colleagues from several locations joined the event and shared input with our visitors during this interactive day. Our teammates presented their projects with pride and passion, showcasing our work and company culture to attendees. Several information stations provided space for our partners and colleagues to chat more after the formal presentations.

 

Age Recognition

One of the most popular topics during the event was the face recognition, age estimation and gender detection demo. Alessio Montuoro Lead Data Scientist, Computer Vision pointed out that in recent times the advent of facial recognition and profiling software has caused some major concerns regarding the privacy of individuals: us!

In order to understand and prevent the misuse of this very exciting and somewhat controversial technology we at Catalysts developed some technology demonstrators that allow us to identify individuals, estimate their apparent age and determine their gender.

While all of this functionality is readily available as cloud based solution from several big companies (e.g. MS Azure Cognitive Services or Google Cloud Vision API) we decided to develop our own solution — develop a deep technical understanding of the technology and work completely offline — meaning absolutely no data gets transferred to any outside party.Developing our own computer vision components suitable for edge computing on embedded devices not only allows us to operate in a completely offline setting but also to develop techniques (like real time anonymization) that prevent the misuse of these technologies.

 

3D Point Cloud

Werner Mücke Business Developer, Senior Remote Sensing Specialist presented how we generate 3D Models from aerial images.

The SURE Aerial Processing Service by Catalysts uses images collected with aircrafts (planes, helicopters, drones) and creates 3D Models with textures, as well as so-called True Digital Orthophotos (TrueDOPs). These photographs and models are not only stunning to look at, they are also a highly accurate data product: you can use them to measure distances, areas, volumes — or do more advanced stuff, like solar potential analysis or plan locations for 5G installations!

 

Automated Document Processing

Katrin Strasser Natural Language Processing Expert presented Automated Document Processing for our visitors during the Open Day.

We automatically process scanned doctors invoices and extract interesting entities such as the name of the practitioner, the services and the invoiced amount and perform plausibility checks on the extracted data.

 

Construction Buddy and Space

One of our Management Board members at Cloudflight, Michael Aspetsberger, was responsible for the Space area as well as for visitor guidance during the event. Among other topics he talked about how the Constructor Buddy works.

Satellites are constantly active, orbiting our planet, measuring, and so is our datacenter: we acquire the satellite’s payload data — a few terabytes per day — and process it with our high-performance-computing toolset. Our Artificial Intelligence know-how and our cooperations with scientific R&D partners allow us to get the most out of the data. Wherever you are, satellites let you view any place on Earth, present and past.

He is a big fan of ODDs and emphasized that our company has a vast range of expertise, but most of our customers only know a little part of it — only that which relates to them.

By showing them what other things we do, we show them what other things are possible.

 

All in all

Since we at Cloudflight value our colleagues’ collective wisdom, we asked a couple of them why they think it is beneficial to attend an Open Door Day (ODD) from their point of view.Matthias Holzinger presented Yellog, a Schachermayer Project during the ODD said: “I’m so happy that our customers are proud to have their projects shown at our Open Day. The discussions that are fostered by openly talking about our projects are always a treat.”

Brigitte Hufnagl provided insights into one of our biggest Logistics/Transportation projects, and emphasized: “Our culture, our way of working together, and the diversity of our state-of-the-art projects definitely inspire others.”In addition to our colleagues in Linz, Michael Jahn joined us from the Vienna-team and presented the Schachermayer Partnerportal Projects. According to him, ODD is a good opportunity for our (future) customers. When they identify themselves with the challenges we solved, they also identify with the stories behind those projects.

If you saw people with VR glasses during the ODD, they must have been around the station of Nikolaus Trixner. He talked about two of our Augmented Reality Projects: VerificationBuddy (developed for DOKA), and AureaNDT (developed for RECENDT). “It’s important to me to be able to present the work that my colleagues and I have proudly worked on and discuss the current market and state of technology, and where those technologies could be used productively.”We also invited startups to join our ODD in Linz who had the chance to present their products or solutions: among them were TeamEcho GmbH & tonestro & ONDEWO & CORE & Fretello & Creative Region Linz & OFFORA & Newsadoo.

The CPO & Co-Founder of the innovative music tech startup tonestro Alexander Kogler noted: “We were particularly impressed by the future-oriented mix of technologies and innovations. It is useful to see how Cloudflight — Catalysts and Crisp Research — inspires people by recognizing the potential of digital innovations and turning visions into reality with state-of-the-art technologies.”Thanks to everyone who organized the Open Day in Linz as well as our business partners and friends for visiting this Get inspired event. It was a pleasure to see so many guests in our Digital Future Space in Linz. The next event follows soon in Vienna, so stay tuned!

 

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