BlinkFocos does a hard and cool thing
At the beginning of the design of the Blink Focos sports photography robot, it was founder David who generated a creative spark in order not to need a photographer to record his son's football activities.
David himself is a senior software and hardware engineer, and he thought of using AI algorithms and today's advanced mobile camera systems to make a device to solve such pain points.
It's not just cool
Through understanding the market environment, it is found that until now there is no similar equipment in the world, but this type of product can solve the shooting needs of many scenes, and the market opportunity is huge, which can fill the gap in the market.
At the same time, China is also vigorously developing quality education, especially sports-related education, so it can derive more demand, which is not only a good product but also a good business.
Extremely difficult
But there is no similar product in the world, this market is almost a blank track, no one can develop a mature similar product, the side reflects that this thing may be a thankless chore, David's own professional intuition tells himself that this is an extremely difficult, requires a lot of resources, and full of energy to all in a thing.
Enter the narrow door, walk a long way, and see the glimmer
However, thinking of their own personal experience and the huge development space of the global sports market, in the case of many doubtful voices, it is still determined that this is a difficult and cool thing, if you can develop a mature product into this door, once you enter, you will find that the road behind will become wider and wider, and there will be very few people who can compete with you. Choosing a difficult thing, carefully polishing the product, focusing on core competitiveness and creating value will definitely have more opportunities.
The narrow door should be broken into the head, the wide door can be entered for free, and we choose the narrow door
In 20 years, David resolutely gave up his high-paying job in the United States. In 2020, he formed his own initial team in the United States, and at the end of 2020, after overcoming many unfavorable factors such as the epidemic, he finally completed the research and development of the first generation of prototype systems. Considering the urgent needs and talent environment of the Chinese market, as well as the support of all aspects of the Chinese market, realizing that the opportunity may be in China, he returned to China in the summer of 2021 and traveled all over Beijing, the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, and then successively set up his own startup company in Haidian and Suzhou Industrial Park in Beijing, and formed a complete team of testing, research and development, marketing and operation.
There are also lucky ones among the narrow doors
In 2021, we got the Chunhui Cup from the Ministry of Education, tsinghua university alumni association, Beijing Haidian Liuchuang Park, Enlightenment Star, Jizhi Future, Suzhou Industrial Park, Amazon "Yunchuang Plan"... And so on with the support of multiple groups and individuals.
See a slight shimmer
In mid-2021 we finally developed a mature product and continued to receive encouragement from all sides.
● In July 2021, it won the third prize of the "GCEA Global Chinese Entrepreneurship Competition" deep technology track jointly organized by MIT, Stanford and Berkeley
● In October 2021, it won the top ten artificial intelligence industry projects in the "Maker Beijing 2021" Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition led by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China
● In October 2021, it won the "Maker Beijing 2021" leading enterprise Yonyou BIP Business Innovation Special Competition Winner Award
● In October 2021, it won the winner of the "Tsinghua University Three Innovations Competition" AI Big Data Track Global Finals organized by the Tsinghua Alumni Association
● November 2021 Selected as Amazon's "Cloud Innovation Program" for the world
● In December 2021, he was selected as the leading talent of Suzhou Industrial Park
● …………
Where is the cool of blink Focos, the second-generation sports photography robot?
Subvert traditional algorithmic thinking
Many people like to compare us with the traditional gimbal, the initial image is ××× device seems to have tracking function, you will not be the same as them, right?
In fact, our equipment is a more intelligent solution, the requirements for the algorithm is much higher, the equipment is through the movement speed of the person and the ball, the direction of movement, the acceleration trend, the specific action and joint changes, to track the displacement changes of multiple people at the same time, to comprehensively calculate the optimal picture, the lens automatically realizes tracking shooting. In this way, no artificial operation can shoot videos comparable to photographers. Blink Focos photographic robot dynamic recognition test
Build core competitiveness
No other device can currently do the thinking ability of multiple people to track at the same time in complex scenes on the field, dynamically identify the action characteristics of people, and predict the trajectory of people's movements, but blink Focos sports photography robot has done it.
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Blink Focos photographic robot dynamic recognition test
Adaptability to a variety of complex scenarios
Team, multiplayer tracking
Focus on soccer, basketball, rugby and other team confrontation games and training hotspot tracking.
Long-range tracking
The Focos system not only achieves stable follow-up shooting of the subject within a range of several meters, but also recognizes the subject target at a long distance (within 40 meters).
Auto zoom
AI intelligently identifies the target and automatically zooms in or out based on distance.
Multicam shooting
When the field is large, the Focos system can support 2-3 devices to shoot together, and automatically integrate multiple videos in the cloud, greatly improving the video texture.
There are many ways to go from technology to product, but we succeeded
The support of product research and development technology is the foundation, because of the particularity of the product, we need to study various venue environments, various competition modes, various groups of people, and even different situations of age groups across the country to adjust and optimize the algorithm structure.
This is also the difficulty of this type of product, and the reason why there is no similar product on the market is this, because any different environmental situation will cause the smoothness of shooting to decrease.
But in 2021 we did a lot of testing, and the daily iteration of the algorithm allowed our products to mature into competitions and training across the country.
Blink Focos photographic robot test site
Attention and recognition of the international market
In the face of such a severe epidemic, we participated in the CES event held in Las Vegas on January 7, 2022, although CES 2022 was held for only four days, but there are still high-tech products from all over the world participating in the exhibition, we are fortunate to be one of them to let friends from all over the world have the opportunity to meet us.
We are fortunate to be one of the few Chinese companies representing China, especially in the sports-related AI field that may be the only Chinese company.
As a result, we also received more attention, and we thought that enough business cards and flyers would all glow in more than 1 day! We have hosted friends from all over the world, from the beautiful Caribbean Sea to the European Alps, from the Middle East to South Korea, and let us see that no matter where we are in the world, everyone has the same interest in sports.
David with a Distributor in Europe
Blink Focos makes every moment of beauty recorded
Our vision is: technology makes photography easier!
I hope that every second of everyone's beautiful moment can be recorded.
Technology changes lives. Empowering sports, doing something hard and cool.
Blink Focos photography robot records the moment
For more videos and introductions, please pay attention to the BlinkFocos Douyin account
Photo/ Written by: Blink & Feng Liang
Editor: Feng Liang