Accelerating business endeavors through AI

AI made easy. This is the mission statement of RUTILEA, a startup from Kyoto, Japan that envisions a future where users around the world can easily use AI with zero coding* required.

RUTILEA uses cutting-edge AI-driven technology to solve pressing social needs. One key feature of the company’s business model is its marketing-driven perspective. Rather than focusing solely on the company’s high-level technological capabilities, RUTILEA has chosen to emphasize their strategy of identifying a profitable business model and combining it with ever-evolving AI technology. This approach has attracted the attention of numerous venture capitalists within Japan and Saudi Arabia, and as of August 2023 the company has raised a total of approximately ¥900 million in funding.

Significantly streamlines manufacturing inspection processes

RUTILEA chose to focus its early efforts on the Japanese manufacturing industry, which is currently facing a chronic shortage of engineers. Routine visual inspections are a common occurrence in this field, and the company believed that incorporating large-volume image data processing—an area in which AI excels—would greatly improve the efficiency of the inspection process.

RUTILEA’s first initiative was the 2019 development of the open-source SDTest visual inspection software, created to drive customer awareness and obtain feedback from a high number of enterprises. This effort to release an open-source program for use with industrial products—an unprecedented initiative in the manufacturing industry—resulted in downloads from over 500 companies in a six-month period. Since then, RUTILEA has connected with numerous enterprises and trading companies to expand sales channels, while also refining their product to reflect issues specific to manufacturing environments.

Unleashing AI for All: Zero Code, Zero Hassle

RUTILEA’s first paid product was the ImagePro image processing software. Released in 2021, ImagePro automates visual inspections without requiring any end-user coding. In 2023 the company published REO, a system that analyzes videos for work evaluation and safety management purposes.

Usually, developing and implementing an AI-based image processing solution requires a lengthy development period, which tends to reduce manufacturer interest. RUTILEA's Nocode AI, however, enables users to create inspection items through a drag-and-drop interface. Once configured, the system can be connected to cameras and begin operating on the same day it is installed.

The company is now moving forward with developing Zero code AI solutions. This approach further shortens the lead time required when introducing AI-based systems, resulting in significantly reduced time loss and human cost. As a specific example, even when real-world data is lacking, AI can generate data that is close to reality and reduce the number of data points required to achieve necessary accuracy levels by pre-training the underlying model for a given domain. At present, RUTILEA is working to develop a Zero code solution that will provide users with a visual representation of AI settings when configuring their installation.

RUTILEA's products, including ImagePro and REO, have drawn acclaim for their efficiency from numerous clients, including Japan's leading automobile manufacturers, consumer electronics manufacturers, and other major companies. As of September 30, 2023, the company has achieved more than 300 sales.

RUTILEA is also taking significant steps toward overseas expansion, having recently entered into a strategic alliance with Rockwell Automation, a global leader in industrial automation and digital transformation.

In August 2023, RUTILEA began a joint project with the Science Technology and Innovation Policy Institute, affiliated with King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi. The project seeks to develop AI solutions for detecting firearms in videos in order to prevent gun crimes, a pressing social problem in Thailand.

Toward AI implementation in capital-intensive industries

Manufacturing is far from the only industry in which AI’s ability to process large amounts of data and software’s ease of duplication can be fully exploited. Indeed, RUTILEA plans to leverage the commercialization expertise it has built in the manufacturing field to expand its reach throughout capital-intensive industries providing uniform services domestically and globally, such as in the public sector and with franchise chains.
Future adoption of RUTILEA's products in these areas will allow for automatic service delivery through individual user recognition. In the public sector, this could drastically reduce documentation-related errors, and in the service industry, it could completely alter current marketing approaches by eliminating the need for statistics on regional characteristics and trends.

A Kyoto-born tech startup with global ambitions

While Japan has yet to produce a globally-recognized tech startup on the scale of Uber or Slack, RUTILEAS’s CEO, Takafumi Yano, has expressed an enthusiastic belief that his company could make that all change. As RUTILEA begins pursuing large-scale global expansion, the company is seeking to leverage its manufacturing industry experience as it works to build internationally-available products that simplify the implementation of AI-driven services for developing high revenue-generating solutions to existing problems.

*At RUTILEA, we distinguish Zero code from Nocode as follows: Nocode refers to a system that allows development without writing source code, while Zero code refers to a system that can be used immediately without the need for development, leveraging a pre-trained foundation model using a substantial amount of training data.