Who we are
HQ : Tokyo
Established : 2010
Employees : 12
https://www.sohga.jp/
We are a system development company with technologies and achievements in areas such as “sensing” and “image recognition and machine learning”, which are demanded in society now that remote work and touch-free operations are increasingly required due to the Covid19 situation.
Since our founding, we have pursued a good balance between R&D and solid management, and continue to provide systems to a wide range of clients.
We also provide specialized technologies such as machine learning, image analysis, API linkage with various external services, drone(UAV) control, hardware sensor control, as well as development of basic web services.
We prefer developing from scratch and pursuing better products, so we avoid projects that just involve customizing packages or creating a single page website.
Our vision
The reason behind the founding of Sohga is to develop systems to realize the ideas of our clients, as well as foster the rich imagination of our employees, and broaden out a better society in which people act with consideration for others.
What kind of society would be better than today?
We regard it as “A society with rich in imagination”.
Mankind has gradually improved things by using their imagination, and raising opinions such as “this would make it better” or “this is not good”.
On the other hand, if we lose our imagination, people would behave more selfishly, and it would make the society a hard place for us to live in. Imagination is a very important element in human and cultural society.
On the other hand, in the field of system development, we can create better systems by thinking about what problems the client is facing, and how we could solve them, from the clients’ point of view and by using our imagination. A good system solves the customer’s problems, brings profits to the company and is reflected in the employees’ salary.
Employees who are rewarded use their imagination to create a better system and it creates a virtuous circle. If you have enough imagination to put yourself in the other person’s shoes, you can smoothly interact with others and make a supportive community.
Sohga is a company that contributes to a better future for all customers, employees, and the public through its system-development work.
Our services/products
A few examples of what we actually do:
Project 1: MEGURU, a parking lot patrol support system
- Accidents involving infants left behind in cars have triggered regular patrols at large parking facilities, particularly amusement parks.
- Sohga has developed a system (patent pending) that uses carts and smartphones with image analysis. By matching plate numbers while patrolling, audibly indicates whether a vehicle has been checked in the past or is new, thereby reducing the burden of patrolling.
Project 2: Human behavior and actions analysis
- Detects movements of a person’s face, hands, feet, etc., and identifies abnormal movements through machine learning.
Captures human “behavior,” such as analyzing work conditions at a factory or predicting shoplifting behavior at a retail store. - In addition to full-body movements, the system also supports more precise hand tracking, such as the tilt and bend of hands and fingers, and eye tracking that analyzes a person’s line of sight and point of view.
Project 3: Indoor autonomous drone flight with image analysis
- Technology for flight control of drones indoors in non-GPS environments using paper markers.
- Real-time analysis of video from the drone’s onboard camera, marker detection, and flight control.
- Detects indoor lighting and controls flight in dark or confined areas such as pipes and tunnels, where it is difficult to even install markers or it is too dark to recognize markers.
Our original business that actively shares information and makes use of knowledge
We are one of the first companies in the industry to adopt the concept of building sensors in drones, gathering data, analyzing them in systems, and using them for business.
We have also launched the informational website Drone Biz (https://dronebiz.net/) and publish information on AI (https://aicam.jp/) based on the experience that AI (machine learning) alone does not solve the problems.
Utilizing pre-process and post-process data that interacts with AI makes AI itself useful, and also developing and operating Hohoem-gift (which means ‘Make you smile giftshop’), a company-owned business that uses image processing and image analysis to create one and only gift all around the world. We are constantly working to create new businesses by making the best use of related technologies.
Skills
Our engineering team
What projects/services is your engineering team working on?
All Sohga employees are engineers, we do not have a team dedicated to sales. This means that everyone has to handle the whole system development process, from sales communication to programming.
Our job is not programming. Our job is to work with customers to understand what the customer’s issues are, gather information necessary to solve the issues, build a system if a system is the effective solution, and solve the customer’s problems. Today, system development work is not confined to inside a screen.
We value the greed to take on new challenges beyond the boundaries of the project as a whole. Since our job is not only utilizing our technical skills but also offering consulting to clients, we want people who can cooperate to create a single project as a whole.
What technologies are you using?
Wide range of technologies including machine learning (AI), image analysis (Computer Vision), API linkage with various cloud services, drone(UAV) control, and hardware sensor control.
What type of engineers work at your company? What is their job content?
- Requirements definition and outline design
After discussing with customers, we analyze factors such as “What they put most value on” “How they want to develop business” and “The areas where they are good at, areas where they are losing out to other companies”. Based on these results, we formulate proposals that should be provided through the system. ※In some cases, we may also provide media strategies other than systems. The above is an example of a client project, meaning building a system upon request, but we also do have our original projects that start from an internal idea. - Detailed design
This process incorporates system requirements into specific screens and items and designs details. In addition to our customers’ industry knowledge, we need knowledge in a variety of fields, such as open source, key IT products, performance, and usability. - Implementation and verification
This is the process of programming and shaping the system. In practice, detailed design and implementation may be repeated to a reasonable degree, but this is a process in which the technical capabilities, such as the speed of execution and ease of adding functions, is reflected directly in the cost.
Some people are involved in all of the above processes, while others specialize in specific processes. However, we do not basically do what we are given, but ultimately aim to create our own work. Even engineers can create jobs by writing and giving lectures.
Do you plan on using any new technologies in the future?
Although Sohga is still a small company, we engaged in a wide variety of technological fields that are far more diverse than any other large company. We are constantly adopting new technologies and actively challenging ourselves. It is difficult to develop systems for the first time in the industry, where there is no way of answering questions when searching online, and no one can tell you the answers. That’s why it’s valuable, and it’s full of opportunities to grow.
Machine learning has been popular recently, but we are applying it in various fields, including image analysis, speech analysis, text analysis, Pose estimation, Hand tracking, Eye tracking, SLAM, and Point cloud control. We can’t write down all of them since we are incorporating new technologies every day.
Our corporate culture
Under the theme of “Making people’s wishes and desires come to real”, we are engaged in development of IT systems and our original services. We are a company that thinks with our customers to reach a moderate and valuable point for spending money and stick with them until it is realized.
We are not a company which research for years aiming to be “first in the world” . It is more important for us to introduce products of good quality quickly and make improvements afterwards, rather than sticking to extremely high targets and taking forever to release a system.
Our strengths include computing the shape and size of objects based on camera images, identifying the people and objects being viewed, and developing software that helps saving labor and automate inspection and marketing. We are a group of engineers who are also enthusiasts about hardware, having long been involved in drones, AI, and researching and developing measurement and data analysis technologies using sensors loaded on drones.
