Andrey Bolshakov, co-founder of NVI Options, discusses how his firm is remodeling security practices within the oil and gasoline trade by way of AI-powered digital supervision programs. He additionally shares his insights into the variations in AI adoption throughout Asia and Europe.
Andrey, to start out, are you able to inform us about NVI Options and your position within the firm?
At NVI Options, we offer AI-based digital supervision companies. Our purchasers are main firms managing important infrastructure, comparable to oil refineries and gasoline manufacturing amenities. These amenities home advanced and expensive belongings, which are sometimes serviced by numerous subcontractors. Sadly, these subcontractors don’t at all times adhere to operational rules, generally bypassing technological protocols or obligatory procedures. This may end up in tools harm and even employee fatalities. Our options are designed to forestall such outcomes.
NVI Options assists our purchasers in implementing regulatory compliance. We digitize technical pointers and create operational eventualities for our software program. We then set up programs comprising good cameras and numerous alert mechanisms on the amenities. These programs combine with the power’s infrastructure to obtain telemetry—an impartial stream of technological knowledge that helps determine ongoing operations.
Utilizing the telemetry and predefined eventualities, our software program evaluates components such because the variety of personnel, their apparel, actions, and the situation of apparatus. If there’s a important deviation from the rules, our system indicators that the operation is continuing incorrectly. As an example, if a contractor guarantees to ship 100 staff however solely 30 arrive, or if smoke seems on-site as a result of employee negligence, our system detects and flags these points in actual time.
The alert system operates on three ranges:
- On-site alerts: Staff are notified by way of loudspeakers of their native language.
- Supervisor notifications: Supervisors and administration obtain instant alerts in regards to the violation.
- Escalation: Additional actions are taken, relying on the severity of the state of affairs.
This multi-tiered signaling system ensures fast, efficient responses to potential hazards or operational lapses, enhancing security and regulatory compliance throughout advanced industrial websites.
I’ve at all times been obsessed with creating programs that assist individuals. Our core mission—saving staff’ lives—is deeply private and motivating for me. About 4–5 years in the past, I met my future enterprise companion, Philipp, who’s now the CEO of NVI Options. Philipp had in depth expertise in gross sales inside the oil and gasoline trade and understood which investments had been price pursuing and the important thing challenges on this sector. Combining my experience in know-how and product administration together with his data of gross sales and economics, we based NVI Options.
At NVI, I’ve been accountable for product technique from the start—defining the product’s options, making certain it helps the appropriate applied sciences, suits inside finances constraints, and aligns with long-term financial targets. Along with technique, I oversee the technological points of the product, together with enhancing monitoring programs, including supplementary tools, and integrating new applied sciences. Philipp handles gross sales and consumer relations.
These duties are significantly difficult as a result of we function in high-tech environments the place hundreds of operations happen, and even minor errors might be extraordinarily expensive. Our software program and tools should work seamlessly with the AI to make sure dependable efficiency.
You participated in ADIPEC 2024 earlier this November. What key concepts and applied sciences did your organization current on the exhibition?
ADIPEC is likely one of the largest world exhibitions centered on oil and gasoline applied sciences. Whereas I’ve attended it a number of instances as a customer, this yr marked our first time presenting our options. Beforehand, we participated in worldwide IT exhibitions like GITEX and InterSEC. Nevertheless, ADIPEC immediately aligns with the trade we function in, so we had been excited to showcase our product there.
The suggestions we obtained was overwhelmingly optimistic. Many firms are more and more prioritizing the security of their workers and technological processes. A rising quantity are both creating or searching for to amass programs like ours, recognizing the huge potential of automation. On-site supervisors typically can not monitor all operations successfully—once they go to, staff may adjust to rules and put on uniforms, however as soon as the supervisors depart, the state of affairs turns into unsure. AI, then again, can repeatedly analyze operations 24/7 and flag any violations.
We observed vital curiosity in our product, particularly from among the world’s largest companies, comparable to ADNOC, the main oil producer within the UAE, and Saudi Aramco, the nationwide oil firm of Saudi Arabia. We had in-depth discussions with these and different key gamers, outlining potential subsequent steps for collaboration. With some, we even signed memorandums of understanding to formalize future partnerships.
Furthermore, we’ve already initiated pilot tasks at a number of Saudi Arabian oil refineries and within the ports of UAE. In UAE, we’re additionally exploring alternatives to implement our options within the safety companies sector.
What units us aside is our willingness to tackle difficult environments. Not like many startups that function comfortably from enterprise middle places of work, providing their merchandise remotely, we’re able to go the additional mile—whether or not to the Arctic, scorching deserts, or different harsh situations—to implement and take a look at our programs on-site. This adaptability has change into a defining power of our firm.
Let’s discuss extra about your options for the oil and gasoline trade. How do you help companies on this sector?
Even in industries like oil and gasoline, violations are widespread. As an example, staff generally skip security protocols to finish duties extra shortly. Contractors may ship unqualified personnel and stretch out work to earn more cash for the additional time spent. With out correct oversight, workers typically fail to comply with rules, as this doesn’t appear to end in instant penalties. Nevertheless, over time, this results in incidents and monetary losses.
Our system helps decrease these points. On the similar time, it enhances work tradition and effectivity as a result of, unsurprisingly, when cameras are current on-site, workers are far much less more likely to break the foundations. Our answer additionally strengthens subcontractor oversight, making certain they don’t attempt to lower corners and that they ship the right variety of individuals as outlined within the contract.
What auxiliary improvements in video knowledge evaluation are driving worth to your purchasers within the banking, agricultural, and logistics sectors?
One promising space is Optical Character Recognition (OCR) know-how, which is designed to extract knowledge from standardized paperwork. These may embody building documentation, work orders, and different kinds of paperwork which are typically solely out there in bodily kind, and generally handwritten. We are able to digitize and acknowledge these paperwork, remodeling them into multimedia paperwork that our AI programs can use for decision-making.
In banking and logistics, a big quantity of paperwork nonetheless exists in bodily kind. Our instruments can shortly acknowledge these paperwork whereas concurrently verifying their authenticity. This drastically reduces operational prices, comparable to these related to managing banking credit score workflows. AI additionally hurries up operations: as a substitute of ready for an operator to enter data from an bill into the system manually, paperwork might be shortly scanned and despatched on to the consumer.
We additionally see nice potential within the agricultural sector. Regardless of the excessive quantity of processes and human labor concerned, many duties are nonetheless not digitized. For instance, in agriculture, having an ERP system applied is taken into account a significant achievement. In areas with much less developed agricultural processes, common crop yields are sometimes half of what they’re in Europe, and I consider that enhanced oversight may enhance outcomes by 30-50%.
How do you see the way forward for video analytics integration in different enterprise segments? Are there industries you’re planning to enter?
My private instant focus is the agricultural sector. I see many similarities with the industries I’ve labored in earlier than, however the potential for digitalization in agriculture stays largely untapped. I might leverage the experience from each of my firms — NVI Options and Megawatt — on this space. For instance, we may use cellular cameras mounted on unmanned autos to offer surveillance throughout massive areas.
Though the agricultural market doesn’t have as a lot concentrated capital because the oil and gasoline trade, it has an enormous variety of gamers, which creates nice alternatives for development. Moreover, I’m extraordinarily serious about working with large-scale enterprise fashions that span hundreds of hectares. For me, this appears like an actual problem.
Inform us about your R&D middle and its key developments.
Our major units are good cameras. The video-processing system is put in immediately on the positioning. That is fairly distinctive as a result of most firms add their knowledge to the cloud, however our websites are sometimes situated in distant areas the place there’s no web entry. Furthermore, we work with important infrastructure, and purchasers choose to maintain their video streams inside safe, native programs slightly than sending them to the cloud. Subsequently, our R&D middle is concentrated on environment friendly real-time video stream processing. This must be carried out shortly and inside essentially the most safe setting potential.
Moreover, we’ve got a really strong infrastructure for producing artificial datasets. When creating AI programs, we regularly face the problem of discovering sufficient knowledge to coach the fashions. Each incident is exclusive, and it’s not possible to gather hundreds of crucial examples. That’s why we’ve developed an engine that permits us to simulate objects with photorealistic accuracy and “create” potential incidents with them. Basically, it’s a simulation much like a high-quality online game, which exhibits what occurs to an object and its individuals earlier than an incident happens. Our developments on this space are distinctive.
What developments do you see rising in video analytics within the coming years?
I see a number of highly effective developments rising. The primary is analytics immediately inside the cameras, often known as edge computing. Builders are realizing that there’s no have to ship knowledge to an information middle; operations might be carried out on-site as a substitute.
The second pattern is extra advanced detections that intersect with programs like ChatGPT. This includes cameras or tools setups trying to “understand” and “explain” what’s occurring at a web site, with out counting on customary eventualities.
There’s additionally an enormous push for programs to change into extra complete. Increasingly more sensors are being built-in, and this knowledge is fed right into a Knowledge Lake, creating huge quantities of information that can be utilized to foretell quite a few incidents.
One other key improvement is the creation of so-called digital twins for companies. Proper now, there are answers that some name digital twins, however basically, they’re simply mirrors of the enterprise—visualizations of operations. A real digital twin replicates all objects and personnel, displaying all manufacturing knowledge, and permitting companies to investigate what is going to occur to their operations over the subsequent week, month, or yr. This knowledge can then inform strategic choices by way of administration programs, creating a capability to affect the bodily world. Presently, there aren’t any instruments in the marketplace able to creating such complete digital twins.
What’s your private tackle the AI and digital twin developments?
I favor an evolutionary strategy. I really feel that in some areas of know-how, we’ve superior so quickly that we’re struggling to totally grasp the world we now reside in and what lies forward. I consider we have to perceive the size of change a know-how will convey and, based mostly on that, introduce it whereas rigorously managing the related dangers.
That stated, there are completely different approaches to this challenge. I encountered this firsthand about 5 years in the past once I was working concurrently with China and Western Europe. Shoppers in China had been able to implement our merchandise instantly, whereas in Europe, I needed to show that such programs would profit people with out intruding an excessive amount of into their private house. This displays essentially completely different approaches to designing enterprise worth programs.
This distinction results in an attention-grabbing story. On the similar time, Europe has applied many rules round synthetic intelligence, Asian international locations, particularly China, haven’t. In consequence, Chinese language firms have made much more progress, whereas Europe has fallen technologically behind by many years. Now, Europeans face a selection: both they’ll isolate themselves inside their very own ecosystem or permit Chinese language companies to enter their markets, bringing completely different values and a culturally distinct financial framework.
