Rajini Anachi: Creating Smarter Robots to Perform Complex Tasks

Rajini Anachi has always been an innovative thinker. So, she was intrigued when a friend asked her to solve a costly problem for a coal mining company. The mining company had a miles-long conveyor belt system transporting coals, and when the system broke down, they had no way of knowing where the breakdown was, and it could take days to fix it.

So, Rajini and her brother set to work. They spent three weeks designing a solution, a fault detection product that could quickly locate and diagnose problems in the conveyor belt system. After six months of hard work, they delivered their first product to the mining company. It was a resounding success, and Rajini decided to build a company around the solution, calling it Numag. Soon, other mining companies and their suppliers discovered the company, bringing more business.

Over the years, Rajini continued to innovate, developing new products to help mining companies improve their operations. Her hard work paid off, and eventually, she sold Numag and returned to school for an advanced degree. Later she came to the U.S. and started another company named mZeal. Its first sale was a communication product to the U.S. ARMY. She felt that there must have been some grace involved in that first Army contract because whenever there was an obstacle, they would just remove it.

When Rajini arrived for the first meeting, she was denied entry because she was not yet a U.S. citizen. However, the Army quickly moved the meeting to a public cafeteria, where they continued to discuss mZeal’s product. When the cafeteria closed, they moved the meeting to an open-air gazebo.

Despite this unconventional setting, Rajini made a strong impression, and the Army was impressed with her communication product. She left the first meeting with a contract offer in hand. Over time mZeal continued to grow and expand its services to include both the public and private sectors. Rajini’s team developed a cutting-edge cybersecurity product that catered to the needs of both sectors. Soon the company was rebranded as Cyglass and later sold to Nominet. After Cyglass, Rajini started her current company, AvaWatz. In a way, AvaWatz is a return to the beginning stages of mZeal, when Rajini and her team were working with the Government on advanced research projects that were often ahead of the commercial world.

About AvaWatz

AvaWatz transforms individual robots into cooperative tasking teams – so they work faster, get more work done, and increase safety to reduce human error. It does this by using A.I. algorithms that help robots cooperate and learn to perform tasks – every time they do their job, they get better at it.

AvaWatz’s Current Use Cases fall under three categories: Inspections & Maintenance, Early Warning, and Surveillance.

Here are a few use cases:

1. For airfield runways – AvaWatz’s system helps air robots detect harmful debris on runways and then guides ground robots to clear away the hazard – in day/night, adverse weather, and no-GPS operations.
2. AvaWatz is developing and testing teaming algorithms and middleware for teams of drones that monitor forests for signs of wildfire. When one drone spots signs of fire, the team decides what formation pattern it should form and fly to get the most accurate and complete information about the fire’s size, shape, speed of spread, and other factors. Special-purpose drones carrying atmospheric and heat sensors are an essential part of the team’s decision-making.

Bringing a Change

Under Rajini’s leadership, AvaWatz is changing how robots can help us with more nuanced and complex work. One essential part of that change is making AvaWatz’s A.I. more transparent so that users know it can be trusted. A.I. algorithms are powerful but they don’t know when they have made a mistake. Rajini and her team have developed software that watches A.I. target tracking algorithms and detects mistakes, and then either auto-corrects the error or tells the operator that the software needs human assistance to recover. AvaWatz is committed to the principles of Trusted A.I. because trust in A.I. is essential for public acceptance and because it’s just the right thing to do.

“Our products benefit both the public and the private sector with applications that increase human safety and reduce human hardships. Our public sector clients are currently from the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Army, and the Department of Homeland Security. And we have early pilot projects underway with private sector prospects in the regional airports and large ranges, as well as with critical infrastructure service providers,”- states Rajini.

The Differentiator

AvaWatz has a unique vision for using robots that differs from the rest of the industry. Unlike most of the industry’s big players who focus on what a single robot can do, AvaWatz’s approach is centered on what robots can achieve collectively. Rather than creating robots that specialize in one particular task, Rajini and her team at AvaWatz envision teams of robots with diverse skills working together to perform complex tasks, much like how people with different skills collaborate to construct a house.

The Primary Challenge

Rajini feels one major challenge is the lack of standardization in the robotics industry. Although there are established standards for small drones, they are not always effective, and there is no comparable standardization for ground robots and other types of robots. The research community has developed an emerging standard for robot communication, but it is still evolving and has yet to be widely accepted in the commercial sector, where manufacturers often create their standards to suit their individual needs. Given the variety of components used in different types of robots, such as motors, sensors, and processors, designing universal standards is a difficult task. AvaWatz is addressing this challenge by adhering to existing standards, following, and participating in the work of standards bodies in the industry.

Looking at the Future

Rajini wants to establish a powerful brand and significant market presence for AvaWatz. She firmly believes that AvaWatz possesses a notable first-mover advantage due to its unique perspective of creating intelligent robot teams that can work in unison by leveraging their complementary skills. Rajini aims to maintain this advantage by identifying fresh avenues for applying AvaWatz’s vision. Her primary focus is to boost the adoption of AvaWatz’s reliable A.I. products and expedite the company’s growth by discovering new markets that can benefit from robot teams that can solve complex challenges.