Preventing industrial accidents is the focus of Perleybrook Labs
Ranjith Antony started with forklift safety, but says the company has a total of 19 safety use cases.
After 14 years in the corporate world, Ranjith Antony decided he wanted to pursue his entrepreneurial passion with the launch of a start-up named Perleybrook Labs, a venture focused on industrial safety.
Accidents in factories cause injuries and agony, but manufacturing companies lose money as well. Factories have to shut down due to accidents and may take months to restart production.
That is not the initial problem that Antony started the company to address. He calls the initial focus on “proactive video management,” specifically using video to authenticate an individual who is seeking to gain access to a manufacturing facility.
“In India (his native country), you cannot just walk into a factory,” Antony says.
Today, Perleybrook Labs is one of the 10 participants in the third cohort of the “Techstars Industries of the Future Accelerator” currently underway in Knoxville. Demo Day is set for 4 to 8 p.m. EDT June 6 at Regas Square, 333 West Depot Avenue, and the public is invited. To register, click here.
For Antony, it’s been a more than decade-long journey since he left corporate America in 2013. After spending six years developing the product, he launched it in 2019, but the launch customer was not using the artificial intelligence-based technology for what Antony and his team intended.
“Also, to see the product in action, we had to sell the underlying infrastructure,” he said, explaining, “That made it not a sustainable business.” Fortunately, another customer said, “I don’t need facial recognition, but can you stop a forklift.”
That’s how Perleybrook pivoted from proactive video management to industrial safety, and forklift safety is the one of the first solutions Perleybrook developed.
How does Perleybrook Labs’ technology work?
It seamlessly connects to existing ONVIF IP (Open Network Video Interface Forum) cameras or proprietary USB cameras, transforming them into intelligent mounted vision sensors. By continuously monitoring the workplace, the company’s lead product named Flagman can identify potential human error in man machine interaction scenario and stop the machine in real time, helping prevent accidents before they occur.
Perleybrook Labs touts these features of its Flagman product:
- It operates without a cloud backend or internet connection;
- It detects and prevents accidents in real time;
- It is electrically integrated with the machine’s braking system;
- It provides SCADA integration; and
- It provides a powerful analytics dashboard.
While the company started with forklift safety, Antony says it has a total of 19 safety use cases. “We also have a 15-year plan that takes us to 2040,” he adds.
Depending on local relationships made during the three-months of the Techstars accelerator, Antony says he hopes to be able to relocate a Co-Founder to Knoxville.
A few years after graduating in 1997 from India’s Cochin University of Science and Technology with a Bachelor of Technology degree in Computer Engineering, he moved to New York City in 2001 where he worked with several companies before launching Perleybrook Labs in Boston in September 2013.
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