YI Tunnel is Officially Venturing Into Overseas Markets Its AI Smart Vending Machine Will Cover 90 Percent of the US Food & Beverage Vending Market in One Year

BEIJING, April 25, 2018 (Newswire.com) - Recently, at the invitation of local channel partners in the U.S., a YI Tunnel team was talking with leading vending machine providers in various regions about the launch of the company’s AI smart vending machine in the U.S. market. Their trip spanned Los Angeles on the west coast, Kansas City, Charlotte in the Midwest, and Boston on the east coast, basically covering each region’s top three equipment providers across the U.S. The accomplishments of YI Tunnel’s overseas business trip are remarkable. It is expected that this will generate sales of up to ten thousand units in a one-year period to come, covering 90 percent of the U.S. food & beverage vending market.

During the business talks, what the overseas partners said the most was: “Something that took the international giant 4 years involving more than 300 people was accomplished by YI Tunnel in less than two years. That’s really amazing!” YI Tunnel’s product is completely suitable for the U.S. market, and it’s gonna be a huge market and huge opportunity to bring leading-edge technology in vision recognition to consumers.

Because YI Tunnel’s machine can lower the cost by more than 60 percent compared to traditional machines, for “every single customer, the No.1 thing they want to know is, how quickly can I get the machine? They are so excited,” said Michael, an overseas partner of YI Tunnel.

Retrofitting a local freezer in the U.S. within one day with a recognition accuracy rate of 99 percent

In order to better demonstrate the strength of YI Tunnel’s algorithm to overseas partners, during this trip the YI Tunnel team performed a simple retrofit to a local freezer in the U.S. (by just adding two cameras) within one day. While doing the retrofitting, the team collected merchandise image data, marked them (all the items in the freezer are from the U.S. locally), and trained the machine to learn. After deployment, the machine’s recognition accuracy rate was up to 99 percent.

YI Tunnel’s AI smart vending machine Relying on vision recognition technology only to enable more accurate recognition and easier operation

YI Tunnel’s AI smart vending machine is based on the Convolutional Neural Network algorithm. It adopts a dynamic pure-vision solution to dynamically recognize the action of taking an item and putting it back with an accuracy rate of over 99 percent. The machine really allows you to “take and go”. You just need to scan the QR code on the freezer’s door using an official app to open it. Then you can take any item you want, and when you close the door, your payment will be made automatically.

Unlike the vending machines currently in the marketplace, YI Tunnel’s AI smart vending machine works on the “dynamic pure-vision” technology, so it doesn’t need the RFID tags or weight sensors to recognize standard and non-standard items. You can take multiple items in one hand or in both hands. Also, different from companies using the “static vision” technology in the marketplace, YI Tunnel’s AI smart vending machine allows you to take an item without having to put it back to its original place. Or you can even put one item on another and the machine can still recognize it. The machine doesn’t require items to be needlessly placed inside the freezer. This helps to lower the operating cost and accommodate more items in the freezer.

Besides, YI Tunnel’s AI smart vending machine is supported by a powerful back end operation management platform as well as an operation & maintenance app, to help customer monitor the freezer in real time for smart operation: you can restock the freezer smartly (when you restock the freezer, the machine can automatically recognize the number of items added), and can view the operation of multiple machines at the same time; you can also view the number of items sold by each machine and carry out merchandise management, procurement management, order management, and transfer management, etc.

Source: YI Tunnel