Canaan and Cathay Tri-Tech to Develop IoT Devices With Facial Recognition Capabilities

Canaan and Cathay Tri-Tech will be working together to develop new IoT devices with facial recognition capabilities. Those devices will feature Canaan’s AI facial recognition module, which is in turn built with the company’s Kendryte K210 AI chip.

Cathay, meanwhile, is best known for developing and manufacturing communications terminals and other IoT devices. The company will be integrating the facial recognition module into its new and existing product lines to support a wide range of applications. For example, the module can enable face-based access control, or be deployed in smart door locks and smart vending machines.

The Kendryte K210 chip is based on RISC-V edge technology, and will serve as the backbone of the first edge computing, C-series products in the Cathay portfolio. Those products will pair the chip with Cathay’s own EVB evaluation boards, SDKs, and reference circuit designs. The module itself boasts a 99.6 percent accuracy rate, and has a small, energy efficient form factor that makes it appealing to product developers.

Canaan is based in based in Beijing, while Cathay is a THine Electronics subsidiary that operates out of Yokohama, Japan. The partnership will help Canaan expand its international customer base, which now extends to US, Japanese, German, and  South Korean markets.

“Compared with other AI facial recognition modules, our module is quite competitive both in terms of size and power consumption,” said Canaan Chairman and CEO Nangeng Zhang. “Looking ahead, we believe that our ongoing development and refinement of our AI solutions will allow us to establish more win-win relationships with companies overseas.”

Canaan and Cathay will be hoping to capture a portion of a global facial recognition market that is expected to be worth anywhere from $8.5 billion to $12 billion by the end of 2025. The access control market is also projected to reach $12.8 billion in the same forecast period.

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April 26, 2021 – by Eric Weiss