CIOInsider India Magazine
Tardid Technologies: Unlocking The Potential Of AI In Heavy Industries
The market size of AI and tech startups in India is projected to witness robust growth in the coming years. The Indian AI market is expected to reach a value of $20.6 billion by 2025, driven by factors such as increased AI adoption, advancements in technology, and the emergence of new use cases. This growth is not only fueled by domestic demand but also by the global recognition of India as a leading provider of AI solutions and services. With India being recognized as a global technology hub, the country has seen a surge in entrepreneurial ventures focusing on AI-driven innovations. The combination of a vast talent pool, supportive government initiatives, and a thriving startup ecosystem has contributed to the expansion of this market.
However, though AI and tech are advancing, the majority of solutions providers focus on optimization and increasing the productivity of the machines or assets. There is still a lot of gap in the industry for assessing asset health, predicting time left for optimal utilization, and opportunities for managing asset health. Founded with the aim of freeing industries from unplanned downtimes, and catastrophic failure and to empower them to achieve more, Tardid Technologies was established by seasoned professionals bringing diverse experiences and industrial expertise. Catering to the needs of the heavy industries (defense, railways, aviation, and many more), the firm offers a wide spectrum of solutions that benefit not just the clients, but also the end users.
In conversation with Aastha Verma, COO, Tardid Technologies, we find out more about the company. Here are some highlights from our interaction.
Could you give a brief account about TARDID’s journey so far as a prominent technology company?
N Tardid, which was founded in 2016 by Niladri Dutta and myself, with roots dating back to 2014, is an AI-focused company based in India, made in India, and made for the world. With a vision to deliver solutions impacting the ground-zero user, and revolutionize industries such as defense, maritime, and oil & gas, we at Tardid recognized the lack of solutions for gauging the health of critical assets in these sectors. The traditional approach of reactive maintenance led to unplanned downtimes, impacting production capacity and reputation. Tardid emerged as a game-changer, offering AI based structural health management, machine health management, and decision intelligence. Leveraging AI technology, we pioneered projects like hull inspection for ships and over the years have delivered nine innovative and novel projects. Notably, our Brainbox AI platform serves as an "AI school”, offering cutting-edge solutions for asset digitization and damage prognosis. Our unique physics-aware process provides comprehensive reports on asset health, remaining useful time, time to fail, and more.
Tell us about your flagship offerings and how are they helping to do better businesses.
The most prominent offering we have is the Brainbox. We have made it into three varied products including Brainbox Aquatle-S, Brainbox SPICA, and Brainbox Stormbreaker. The Brainbox Aquatle-S is a system that works specifically for the marine domain from the structure to the machine of the asset, right from the ship angle to every functionality involved.
The SPICA is a smart platform for non-destructive evaluation, useful for identifying cracks and anomalies using AI. It is a hardware product useful for multiple purposes, for example, if used in gas cylinder inspections, this automated system removes the need for traditional systems of dipping the cylinder in water to find cracks or damage. The automated system removes chances of human error or oversight, ensuring every cylinder being sent out to the public is completely safe. The Brainbox Storm breaker is a very unique product, amalgamating features of multiple different products into one. It is a decision intelligence module that can be applied to various industries like steel plants, car manufacturing, oil & gas, you name it. Brainbox is a Vertical AI product.
Tardid emerged as a game changer, offering AI-based structural health management, machine health management, & decision intelligence
Could you tell us about the technology framework of Brainbox?
In terms of technology, while we do a lot of diverse things, we ensure that our systems are completely physics aware at the crux of it. So while people know about IoT and optimization has become the buzzword, how it differs from us is that IoT and similar solutions focus on digitizing datasets, looking at just the operating parameters and finding ways to increase productivity, through process optimization. What Brainbox does is it not only looks at operating parameters but also environmental conditions or parameters which are influencing and impacting the operations of a machine. We can tell you not only about the current structural and functional status but also about the remaining useful life. Basically, a complete prognosis. Through Brainbox AI, we can tell the time to fail of a machine or a component of it, as well as suggest ways to delay the time of failure, if it can be delayed. This helps industries with decision intelligence, knowing when they can expect downtime, and finding alternatives to prevent that downtime or plan for it.
Acquaint us with a case study of how one of your offerings changed the scenario for the better for your customers.
One of the projects was introducing SPICA to a gas cylinder filling facility. To check for cracks and leaks normally the approach involves a person dipping the cylinder in a water bath. If they take a break during that process, a number of cylinders can go unchecked and pose a threat.By using a scientific solution, this risk is eliminated because the machine does not require any breaks and continues to check every single cylinder.
Another prominent project was when we worked with a ship and conducted a thorough structural analysis, and Brainbox was deployed into the ship. While on the sail, the system started sending alerts about a torsional disturbance despite there not seeming to be any issue. The surveyor could not find anything wrong, however, when further inspected, we found that a freak wave hit the vessel and caused a significant deformation in stiffener and a few member elements in the forward section due to excessive bending, because of which the alert was being displayed. The timely notification by the system ensured that the vessel was quickly brought to dry land and no accidents took place causing any monetary or life loss.
What are the current projects you are working on and what is your vision?
Currently, we are working on many different kinds of projects from looking into smart ship operation to utilizing SPICA features for gun components, and much more. With our products, what we try to do is test them across parameters, and find their application for diverse industries and purposes to apply each of them wherever they can be helpful.
Our vision with brainbox was to make a 'made in India' AI product for enterprise asset management, which we have accomplished. We have also gone against the odds and conquered domestic as well as international markets while serving both governmental and commercial sectors. While the view, in general, is that you have to pick either the government or commercial segment, we have developed our products and tested them to the highest level, making sure that they are military grade, which stands as a testament to their robust nature which makes it simpler for the platform to handle other sectors.
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