Neural Annotations: AI was developed to solve the Blue Caviar problem

Welcome back to Neural Notes, a weekly column where I discuss how AI is impacting Australia. In this issue: an AI-powered robot collecting blue scampi caviar in Western Australia.

At the launch of ARM Hub’s Propel-AIR 2.0 robotics and AI accelerator in Brisbane this week, one of the demonstrations that arguably attracted the most interest was neither a humanoid robot nor a large autonomous machine.

What this small business offered was unique pieces of caviar.

For almost a decade, Brisbane-based seafood producer Umar Nguyen, also known as The Fish Girl, has been harvesting and selling high-quality blue caviar from scampi.

It is a unique product with a specific problem: it also needs to be cleaned and quality checked by hand – egg by egg.