Bonsai AI Inc. Creates System to Teach Drones How to “Learn”

Some may argue that with the continued advancement of drones in the workplace, human jobs are being lost.  However that is far from the case.  Many of the jobs that drones are being used for are ones that are too dangerous for humans to do.  These drones are filling the gaps in the workforce, not creating opportunity losses.  As drones are becoming more widespread it is also becoming important for them to have software systems that will allow them to adapt to situations the way a human would be able to.

For a drone that works in a factory or is part of a delivery system, there needs to be a way for the drone to learn about it’s changing environment.  In 2017 a group of researchers from Microsoft released a paper about how autonomous drones will need to be able to think autonomously as well.  This past year Microsoft acquired a California software startup called Bonsai AI Inc.  The small company headquartered in Berkley, CA was founded in 2014 “on the core belief that the best way to build effective machine learning systems is to provide a better way to teach them.”  As Bonsai’s website goes on to explain, “Machine Teaching, combined with deep reinforcement learning, is the fundamentally different approach needed for enterprises to build AI models powerful enough to optimize and automate real-world systems.”

The software the Bonsai has developed puts the world of AI, artificial intelligence, in the hands of anyone who needs to adapt it.  No longer will an enterprise need an AI department to advance their autonomous operations.  Rather with Bonsai’s program called BRAIN (Basic Recurrent Artificial Intelligence Network) a drone engineer can set up exactly what they want their drone to learn.  Once they have designated the rules and criteria for the drone to learn they send the drone through a learning process.  The drone essentially goes to school.  It is run through a series of specific simulation models until it has learned what is expected of it.  Mark Hammond, Bonsai’s CEO and cofounder explained, “It’s not randomly exploring, it’s exploring in a way that’s guided by the teacher.”

It is similar to the software used in self driving cars like Tesla, however Bosai aims to democratize this type of software, putting it into the hands of anyone in need of machine learning.  As they are now under Microsoft’s wing, their software is set to help in a broad range of categories.  One such company showing interest in testing out BRAIN is United Rentals, an industrial machine rental company.  They are curious to see how this software can improve the operations of compact track loaders that work in muddy, uneven terrain conditions.  Jeff Dance, the company’s CEO, said, “These are dirty, dangerous, and dull jobs, and there’s not enough people.”  With Bonsai’s software this risky job can be avoided, better allocating the efforts of the company’s limited human workers.

This same principle can be extended to drones monitoring powerlines or windmills.  It can be used to advance drone delivery systems or emergency response missions.  According to Bonsai’s website, “A fundamentally different approach to programming AI, we enable you to focus on solving your problem instead of spending all your time hardcoding complex algorithms.  Everything you need to build, train, and deploy AI models in your real-world systems. The Bonsai Platform provides the infrastructure, and tooling to easily add intelligence where it matters.  Our Platform enables subject matter experts, developers, and data scientists to leverage state of the art innovations in Machine Teaching and deep reinforcement learning.”

With this new acquisition Microsoft has positioned themselves to be a the forefront of this technology’s advancement.  It will take their cloud program Azure to the next level, putting it ahead of the race with it’s main competitor, Amazon.  With Bonsai’s BRAIN, creating vendor specific autonomous cloud options is now available to anyone looking to partner with Microsoft.


ABOUT US: DroneVideos.com is a Nationwide Media Company specializing in custom Drone Videos for real estate, commercial, farms, construction, golf courses, roof inspections and more. All of our Drone Operators are fully licensed and insured. When you purchase a Drone Video Package from us, you will receive a video professionally edited, color corrected and presented to you on an SEO-Friendly webpage that you can easily share online and on Social Media with a click of a button. Click here to get started.
Start Your Order
We Offer a Variety of Drone Video Packages
to Fit Your Needs and Budget