ISOLABS kicking early goals

Picture of Sebastian Tofts-Len
Sebastian Tofts-Len
// // Perth-based technology company, ISOLABS seeks to implement advanced AI and data driven solutions for companies and researchers in Australia...

// Perth-based technology company, ISOLABS seeks to implement advanced AI and data driven solutions for companies and researchers in Australia…

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is developing rapidly, and there can be no doubt that it is and will continue to be an integral part of our daily lives. Innovators look to solve some of society’s most pressing challenges in industries such as healthcare, finance, national defence and manufacturing. ISOLABS looks to be apart of this ‘fourth industrial revolution’. 

Based in Perth, the technology company conducts research and seeks to implement advanced AI and data driven solutions for companies and researchers in Australia. 

Most recently, the company has been kicking some major goals in the early development of their services.

Government grants

As part of the ‘Artificial Intelligence for Decision Making Initiative’, the Department of Defence received more than 200 proposals for solutions aiming to solve Australia’s key defence and security challenges.

Dr Tim McKay of the Department of Defence said the response was overwhelming and demonstrated the depth and breadth of AI expertise across Australia.

“The quality of the submissions was excellent; far above what we expected,” he said.

Over half the submissions were from universities; a quarter came from industry, and the remainder came mostly from individuals, with a small number coming from publicly funded research organisations.

Out of the many high quality submissions, ISOLABS was successful and awarded four of the grants.

“Through this process, we’ve managed to uncover talent and expertise that we may otherwise never have discovered,” Tim said.

Development with clients

ISOLABS looks to service clients in WA who want to leverage emerging technologies to digitise, augment or otherwise improve their commercial and research processes.

For example, the company recently worked with small satellite startup Picosat Systems as part of the SmartSat CRC Firefly Challenge in early August. The project was to develop software for their prototype of a bushfire monitoring solution. 

ISOLABS kicking early goals

Co-founder of ISOLABS, Casey Lickfold said their role in the collaboration was to help prototype Picosat’s product by providing software to complement and better demonstrate the value of their hardware.

More technically, as Picosat works with nanosatellites that only have space for very small cameras, the company needed to prove their satellite is valuable by showing that the cameras can still produce useful data.

“To that end we built software to align and stitch images from multiple small infrared cameras, making higher-quality images from which we could more accurately detect bushfires,” said Casey.

It is expected that this software will be used to detect bushfires from orbit before they become unmanageable.

Ultimately, this work will aim to reduce the strain on emergency services, mitigate natural disasters, and improve Australia’s capabilities in the space industry.

In-house products

ISOLABS have developed two in-house products: Algomatic and Grizzle Guts.

Algomatic is an advanced trading tool driven by AI. It allows users to access, design, and test state-of-the-art AI and algorithmic trading strategies with zero lines of code. The platform creates an opportunity for new traders and non-programmers to use sophisticated tools typically only available to successful professional traders.

Grizzle Guts looks to help people conduct better experiments to improve their gut health. It allows people to run experiments, easily log things that matter to each person, and review interpretable artificial intelligence models for insights into the self-reported data.

Ongoing research

Furthermore, the company is actively pursuing research and commercial opportunities in two emerging areas of artificial intelligence: explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) and reinforcement learning (RL).

Casey said that both of these areas are critical to the future interactions of AI and humans, and yet both are underdeveloped from a technical perspective compared to more established AI fields such as computer vision. 

“In particular, XAI is about improving human-AI interactions, allowing users of AI products to ‘see inside the black-box’, increasing their understanding and trust of the system. RL on the other hand is a technique where AI ‘agents’ learn to operate autonomously in new environments. This is going to be a major technology in many industries from robotic space exploration to smart-grid optimisation.”

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For more information, visit www.isolabs.com.au

ISOLABS have recently published research on a new area of artificial intelligence called Graph Neural Networks.

MAIN IMAGE: ISOLABS co-founders. Image Supplied.

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Sebastian Tofts-Len

Sebastian is an undergraduate economics student and research assistant at Curtin University. He mainly writes on startup funding, launches, events and grant programs.
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