This camera chip can track 200 people at the same time

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A Chinese start-up chip company has demonstrated their latest product: A camera chip that can recognize 200 objects or people at the same time.

The company, Horizon Robotics, claimed this is six times more than their competitors.

"The previous industry leader in AI can recognize 30 people. Our chip can do 200 people at the same time," said Huang Chang, co-founder and VP of algorithms at the company, at the press release in Beijing on Wednesday.

People at the press release test the chip's demos‍. /Horizon Robotics Photo

Watch our live rebroadcast to see the demonstration in action

Small and fast

Huang explained the company's approach to computer vision is a bit different from other firms.

AI programs, like computer vision, require a lot of computing power. Previous solutions employed supercomputers to do all the calculations.

In the case this smart camera, the video data must be streamed to a central server to get processed, and this can result in a huge data cost.

"But Horizon's Sunrise chip is so small and efficient that it can process all the videos on the camera side," Huang told CGTN.

Horizon's VP of algorithm Huang Chang explains the software of the products. /Horizon Robotics Photo

In the demo area, the company set up some scenarios to demonstrate their products to potential customers. These included a mass facial-recognition system, a road traffic interpretation system and a on-vehicle chip, named "Journey", that can understand what's going on in the front.

"Our chip is also efficient in terms of energy," Huang added. "It operates at only 1.5 watts for typical applications."

Horizon's core members are mainly from Baidu, Facebook and Nokia. They quit their jobs to form Horizon in 2015 and "build a complete AI solution," according to CEO Yu Kai.

Horizon CEO Yu Kai explains the Journey chip's assisted driving features. /Horizon Robotics Photo