Fujitsu Develops AI Technology that Automatically Detects Different Work Elements

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Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. has announced the development of a technology that automatically detects different work elements—for instance, "removing a part," "tightening a screw," or "installing a cover"—from video data consisting of a series of tasks from manufacturing lines and other places of manual work.

Conventionally, in workplaces like factories, efforts to improve productivity and enhance quality have included recording the work of staff and identifying and improving upon problems in different work elements from the data. To measure the time required for each work element from the video data, however, it’s necessary to divide video data into separate work elements manually. This often means that the man-hours required to measure the time for each work element is several times to several tens of times more than the total length of the video.

Fujitsu has expanded upon its "Actlyzer" technology for detecting human movement and behavior from video data, and developed an AI model that takes into account the variation of each movement and the difference in individual workers’ movements, using work data from one person and the data divided by each work element as training data. When this technology was applied to the analysis of operations at Fujitsu I-Network Systems Limited’s Yamanashi Plant (Location: Minami Alps City, Yamanashi Prefecture), it was confirmed that work tasks could be detected with 90% accuracy and that the results could be used to improve the efficiency of operations analysis.

By leveraging this technology, Fujitsu will continue to contribute to the promotion of work process improvement activities and the passing on of specific skills for more efficient work at various sites.