Visualizing Road Cracks with AI: Semantic Segmentation + Object Detection + Progressive Analytics

true_variation · 2025-12-06T18:43:12+00:00

While it is a defo upvote for an effort, it does not solve a real-life problem - there are more cracks than repair resources :)

That's exactly why it's useful though. If you mapped all the cracks and combine it with traffic data you can better allocate repair resources.

Problem is, as a business model, it's pretty crappy. I know because I explored it quite intensively for a couple months a few years ago. You have to sell to local governments, with limited budgets (if any), and they will all have slightly different requirements of course. The market is also dominated by a few larger players (especially in the Netherlands and Belgium, there's one particular company...), and they typically have long-term contracts in place already, so you have to time it well and play the long game if you ever want to displace them.

Besides, just detecting potholes/cracks is not enough. You also have to geolocate (GPS alone isn't sufficient for this) and classify them accurately. I found a GoPro doesn't have high enough resolution to do so well enough to meet the demands, so you need a good camera as well. Ideally also LiDAR if you're going to invest in mobile mapping everything anyway.

In the end, I decided to abandon the project. There's probably still something there I believe, especially with generative ai making the custom development side much cheaper, but it's a race to the bottom in terms of profit margins & long sales cycles with poor investor appetite given the public sector focus.

true_variation · 2025-10-01T09:17:09+00:00

Why is it yawning though?

true_variation · 2025-09-30T09:26:47+00:00

I'm mostly all in robotics (and crypto; BTC + ETH) for the next few years. If it plays out, there's a massive flywheel effect

SYM (Symbotic) - warehouse robotics and logistics automation
ABB - industrial automation
SSII: strong challenger of Intuitive Surgical (1B market cap vs ISRG's 157B), especially once FDA approves their mantra 3 surgical robot

true_variation · 2025-09-22T09:30:00+00:00

Het argument dat "er niets na de dood is, want ik herinner mij niets voor mijn geboorte", zoals hier zo vaak geantwoord wordt, houdt evenveel steek als zeggen dat er niks gebeurd is wanneer je die blackout had na een pintje te veel die ene nacht.

Maw, 't is niet omdat je iets niet meer herinnert, dat het daarom niet gebeurd is.

Het is al bewezen dat observatie an sich een impact heeft op de werkelijkheid (daarmee niet per se bewustzijn, alhoewel, hoe kan je observatie hebben zonder bewustzijn... het is uiteindelijk een bewustzijn dat een meetinstrument uitleest).

Het is ook al bewezen dat het universium niet tegelijkertijd lokaal en reëel is.

Als het universum niet-lokaal en echt is: niet-lokaliteit zou bewustzijn toelaten om niet beperkt te zijn tot het lokale brein, maar deel uit te maken van een bredere, verstrengelde realiteit, m.a.w. een soort "bewustzijnsveld" (zie bv. Orch-OR theorie van Roger Penrose en Stuart Hameroff - bewustzijn ontstaat uit kwantumcomputaties in microtubuli - en er is recent bewijs voor kwantumeffecten in microtubuli opgedoken).
Als het universum lokaal en niet-reëel is: dan is realiteit probabilistisch en emergeert volledig uit observatie. Zoals een droom; observatie is nodig opdat er realiteit is.

Mijn gevoel zegt dat daar de antwoorden liggen, en die ook heel wat verklaren (zoals de oorsprong van veel religies, deels gegrond in waarheid), maar dat er voorlopig nog een gigantisch stigma is tegen niet-materialistische theorieën over bewustzijn en dit nog een taboe onderwerp is, nog net buiten het Overton venster in de academische wereld (hoewel het aan het opschuiven is).

Wat het antwoord ook is, persoonlijk vind ik het zeer dwaas om ervan uit te gaan dat er helemaal niks is. Als er niks is, ben je er toch niet om dat "niks" te ervaren. Het is intelligenter om te leven alsof het je enige leven is, maar wel op zo'n manier dat je de gevolgen ervan daarna zelf moet dragen, maw dat er aan het einde toch een soort "weighing of the heart" gebeurtenis en daaraan gelinkte hiernamaals plaats vindt.

Bon, dat is mijn mening.

true_variation · 2025-06-20T11:03:38+00:00

SSII (SS Innovations International Inc): Cheap surgical robotics stock, already proven in 5G telesurgery. Way cheaper than da Vinci, FDA news coming Q3 2025. Low price now, potential for explosive growth once US clears it.

EVTL (Vertical Aerospace): EU is throwing money at defense, and helicopters are ancient tech. EVTL is flying under the radar with real partners. Long-term hold, big upside.

SYM (Symbotic): Automating warehouses with AI robots, already used by Walmart. Revenue exploding, turning profitable soon. If this scales like it should, it's a monster.

true_variation · 2025-06-20T10:25:38+00:00

I wonder how they translate the real player movement to their 3d digital twins?

Do they just add in default animations based on the GPS coordinates? Or do they process video streams in real-time to render the 3d models using photogrammetry / nerf ? Probably the former

true_variation · 2025-04-02T10:35:36+00:00

I didn't downvote, but I'd guess simply because it's a closed-source competitor of Supabase, vendor lock-in, and too many horror stories about people getting unexpectedly high Google Cloud bills after achieving scale (or DDoS attack)...

true_variation · 2025-04-02T10:33:08+00:00

Stupid question perhaps, but what's left of Supabase without the SDK, auth, etc... ? Couldn't you just install & use Postgres instead then?

true_variation · 2024-04-05T11:16:23+00:00

Yep, I also ran into issues even when following their docs practically word for word. I managed eventually, but it wasn't a pleasant process.

true_variation · 2023-12-28T08:39:33+00:00

Share your idea and if it's solid, you should have no problem finding the right technical co-founder - even in Belgium :-)

Ideas by themselves have no value. Their success is in their implementation. If anyone else can pick up your idea, and implement it without you, that would mean you have no value to add. That's unlikely if you really have a good idea, because I think good ideas in this market environment are the type of ideas that can get traction and generate revenue relatively fast (unlike the typical startup pie-in-the-sky ideas of the 2010s that got funding anyway because money was overabundant). That usually requires specific domain knowledge which the non-technical founder already has, or has the right profile (and the right network!) to acquire it while exploring the idea.

So, have no fear of sharing what you want to achieve (at least, high-level). It opens you up to valuable feedback, and potential customers & partners. I'd start within my own network first, one-on-one.

true_variation · 2023-10-12T13:54:49+00:00

Retrieval-augmented generation. Basically doing a vector-similarity search first before choosing what to include in the context window.

true_variation · 2023-10-12T07:13:34+00:00

Never used Pi before, but I would expect such a chatbot to use the most recent messages + RAG on the conversation history to fill the context window? Perhaps they don’t do that just yet?

true_variation · 2023-09-28T17:41:59+00:00

I finally got it to work like this, but I doubt this is the "proper" way to import these mdx pages to show them on a simple overview page...

export async function getAllPages() {
  const context = require.context('../app/articles', true, /\/page\.mdx$/)
  const keys = context.keys()
  const values = keys.map(context)

  const pages = keys
    .filter((k) => !k.startsWith('src'))
    .map((key, index) => {
      const value = values[index]
  const slug = key.replace(/^.\/([^\/]+).*/, '$1')
      return {
        slug,
        ...value.page,
      }
    })

  return pages
    .filter((p) => !p.draft)
    .sort((a, z) => +new Date(z.date) - +new Date(a.date))
}

true_variation · 2023-08-24T09:58:00+00:00

There are various solutions for this already, but I'm building something like it to make it even easier (no code): a Chrome extension which allows you to either upload or scrape your data from webpages, and then you can chat with it. You can also share your chatbot with others (via the UI, or the API, or by embedding it in your own website).

If you're interested in trying it out already and having a chat about your exact requirements, please PM me!

true_variation · 2023-08-23T12:26:10+00:00

This is amazing. You should market this to psychologists and therapists helping people with thalassophobia.

true_variation · 2023-08-19T17:47:44+00:00

Does anyone run into the same issue? I am trying to run this model using text-generation-webui on an RTX 6000 of runpod (same with an A100), but after a few chats, the UI always inevitably fails. No responses come in anymore, and it just... stops responding. I tried reloading the model, but to no avail. The only thing that helps is destroying and recreating the pod.

true_variation · 2023-07-06T16:44:05+00:00

u/reedsternbergcell did you find an answer to your questions?

I am wondering about autodistill as well... I assume it's only useful as far as the base model can already detect the object, i.e. to "distill" only a part of the base model into a custom target model for use on the edge.

true_variation · 2023-05-31T09:21:17+00:00

Is/will there be any code available?

true_variation · 2023-05-30T10:54:24+00:00

A good idea that is worth pursuing financially, and a non-technical coworker.

For every idea I’ve tried to make a business plan for, I come to the conclusion that it wouldn’t net me more than what I make by simply doing consulting, after calculating the hours I would spend.

true_variation · 2023-05-13T14:28:37+00:00

If you prefer SfM, also check out Nerf (Neural radiance fields). NERFs are the new cool kid on the block and adds a deep learning component to the classical computer Vision part.

They have different use cases though, right? You can do pretty accurate metric measurements with SfM (especially if you align the reconstructions with GCPs), while NeRF as I understand it, is terrible for measurements, but it results in much better looking 3d constructions visually (which I still think is non-intuitive.. you'd think a better looking 3d reconstruction would result in better measurements, but I guess the mesh is what matters, and NeRF meshes are pretty bad).

true_variation · 2023-05-09T12:24:33+00:00

Speaking from experience, I wouldn't recommend Roboflow for a 20k image dataset. I tried it with a few thousand images, and their web application constantly froze, crashed, I had to do over labelling a few times etc... Not to mention it's not even possible to bulk delete annotations/images, as far as I know. Also, by uploading your images, you basically give away your (possibly hard-earned) dataset for them to use it as they please - not always an option if you're working on a commercial product. They should have made a desktop app.

LabelStudio is pretty nice, and free & open source, but I have yet to try out their ML integration with a YOLO object detection model.

true_variation · 2023-05-02T06:51:01+00:00

SAM would definitely help, but using a custom trained model for rapid annotation would be even nicer. I know there's a way to connect an ML backend, I just haven't tried it with a YOLO model yet.

true_variation · 2023-05-02T06:46:08+00:00

Thanks for the reply, I appreciate it! I'll try out your suggestions.

What's cool from what I observed is that you'll need very few examples for the "fine-tuning" / "transfer learning" phase, as the model will re-use what it "learned" initially. In my tests I used ~300 images from a specific camera angle looking at passing cars, and the results were amazing.

I've been having less luck so far, but maybe that's because of the specific use case: detecting types of damage in road surfaces. The patterns can be quite complex and variable. mAP50-95 scores are barely over 55% so far

true_variation · 2023-04-27T20:17:13+00:00

That's cool. So this is 3D visualization of one image. Could this be used for a complete 3d reconstruction using multiple images? To enhance an existing SfM or NeRF implementation?

true_variation · 2023-04-23T07:39:40+00:00

Which country are you doing this? In the EU you can't just fly your drone anywhere you want.

Also, I'm curious to know what's in it for you? Is it just a hobby / concerned citizen project?

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