Kolkata, December 4: IIT Kharagpur researchers have developed a portable Artificial Intelligence-based device for automatic inspection of goods manufactured in MSMEs. According to a PTI report, the innovation will immensely benefit the micro, small and medium enterprises, which rely on manual checking and face losses when an entire batch is rejected if a few samples turn out to be faulty during random inspections, he said.

The research team, comprising Professors Surjya K Pal and Debashish Chakravarty, technical staffer Pravanjan Nayak among others, has filed a patent for the system, which will be made available to MSMEs to license the technology. MSME Employment Opportunities: Centre Plans to Create 5 Crore Job Opportunities in Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Sectors in India.

How Does the Device Work?

The portable device will click pictures of products when set up on a batch of goods and send the feed to the AI-based software for quality control.

Professor Pal highlighted that MSMEs mostly rely on manual inspection, were a few samples are randomly selected and checked based on which the entire batch is accepted or rejected. This not only lacks effectiveness but also increases the cost of production.

The MSME sector, which employs over 10 crore people in the country and contributes nearly 30 per cent of India's GDP and 50 per cent of export revenue, is still outside the ambit of industry-scale adoption of artificial intelligence and machine learning, Professor Pal further pointed out.