Sony Semiconductor has announced the launch of its new Edge AI sensing platform, being demonstrated at this year’s National Retail Federation’s annual conference and expo taking place Jan. 15-17 in New York City.

The platform, dubbed Aitrios, was designed to help retailers and their partners democratize and deploy visual AI solutions at scale. The design was first announced in 2021.

Aitrios enables retail customers to “visualize and capture” real-world stores and use AI predictions to preempt stock or staffing shortages and optimize daily operations. 

“The Aitrios platform is designed to democratize visual AI beyond expensive and unwieldy moonshot projects and move toward solving narrower, concrete problems that have a clearer path to deliver a return on investment,” said Eita Yanagisawa, Sony’s senior general manager of system solutions. “We are excited to be able to launch Aitrios through Microsoft Azure Marketplace to U.S. and European partners and customers. Together we will accelerate the age of edge AI sensing solutions that work in synergy with the cloud services.” 

Alongside Aitrios’ global expansion, Sony is also launching the Console Enterprise Edition, a fee-based service for the platform, in the U.S. and Japan. The service is designed to streamline the development and implementation of sensing solutions using edge devices such as AI cameras.