20 Companies Leading the AI Revolution

Japanese consumer electronics company Sharp has staked a claim to the marriage of AI and IoT with a program it calls AIoT, a network of AI-enabled devices that constantly monitor how they are used and adapt to offer personalized services and solutions. The company claims to have more than 150 such products in categories as diverse as pet care and audiovisual systems.

The German engineering and electronics company plans to invest about $340 million by 2021 on AI research at three AI centers around the world. Among the projects Bosch is working on is a deep network for video and radar signal processing for autonomous vehicle sensors.

Korean electronics giant LG’s ThinQ brand offers various products that are integrated with AI functions and services. These products, the company says, “can share and study information between themselves.” As with other AI smart-home forays, LG seeks to train the devices to understand how people use them in order to offer a tailored experience to each user.

As an imaging and electronics company, Ricoh’s AI focus has been on machine vision and image processing. For example, the company has developed a camera system that measures road surface conditions using an ordinary vehicle instead of a specialized one to inspect and schedule maintenance.

In addition to its partnership with Hitachi on a smart power plant, Mitsubishi conducts AI research in computer vision, speech and audio processing, and data analytics. The company also builds cars, and at this year’s CES, Mitsubishi showed off its Emirai 4 smart mobility concept car with an augmented reality, heads-up display, smart-home and mobile payment integration, and biometric authentication.