Kudan Inc. (Headquarters: Tokyo; CEO: Daiu Ko; hereinafter “Kudan”) is pleased to announce that its Visual SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) technology has been adopted in the next-generation “Log Walk” service, which has been fully rolled out by log build Inc. (Headquarters: Kanagawa Prefecture; Representative Director: Kenichi Nakahori; hereinafter “log build”), a company driving digital transformation (DX) in the construction industry.
Construction site management work — conducted to verify progress, quality, and safety — has traditionally required site supervisors to visit job sites in person and confirm conditions visually. In recent years, however, the growing labor shortage has increased the number of sites each supervisor is responsible for, making it difficult to inspect every site with sufficient frequency.
In addition, conventional photographs and 360-degree camera footage have offered only limited means of pinpointing where within the site, and in what orientation, each image was taken, or of reviewing the captured material as a spatially continuous whole. As a result, reviewing specific areas later from a chosen position or viewpoint has been difficult, and supervisors have often had to return to the site in person.
With the “Log Walk” service, the operator simply walks through the site with a commercially available 360-degree camera. Kudan’s Visual SLAM technology then estimates the camera’s trajectory and the three-dimensional structure of the surrounding environment, providing the information needed to spatially connect the entire site. As a result, construction sites can be stored and reviewed not merely as photo or video records, but as spatial data carrying both positional and viewpoint information. Site supervisors can then remotely review the site from any position or viewpoint — as if they were physically present — to grasp progress and construction quality. By receiving AI-based preliminary assessment results alongside their own review, supervisors can manage progress and quality with fewer personnel and less time.
Construction sites are particularly challenging environments: materials, scaffolding, temporary structures, workers, and heavy equipment move daily, and even the same location can look dramatically different depending on when it is captured. Combined with mixed indoor/outdoor settings, changing lighting conditions, narrow spaces, occlusions, and repetitive structures, estimating self-position from images alone presents significant technical difficulty. Kudan’s commercial-grade Visual SLAM algorithm enables stable self-localization even in such highly dynamic real-world environments.
Image: Kudan Visual SLAM in operation
Key Benefits of This Service
- Significant reduction in capture workload: There is no need to install fixed cameras or perform complex measurement work. The operator simply walks through the site to acquire spatial data with positional information.
- Improved quality of remote management: Because the captured data is spatially organized by Visual SLAM, site supervisors can examine details remotely from any position and viewpoint within the site, improving both the precision and the efficiency of site comprehension.
- Operational efficiency: Because specific locations can be reviewed later within the spatial data, the number of physical site visits is reduced, accelerating decision-making and significantly improving time efficiency.
- Practical operation with commercial cameras: Rather than relying on expensive specialized measurement equipment, the service enables simple data acquisition with commercially available 360-degree cameras, achieving an operational system that is easy to implement on-site.
- Automated checks of drawings, safety, and quality: A check-design AI automatically cross-references the captured spatial data with drawings, construction specifications, and safety regulations, automating part of the verification work traditionally performed on-site by people.
- Converting on-site operations into digital assets: The spatial data acquired through this service is linked with the standardized inspection platform that log build’s knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) service “Remote Daikou” operates daily, enabling construction site quality management to evolve continuously into a reproducible digital asset.
Performing high-precision self-localization at construction sites — where the surrounding environment changes rapidly — using only inexpensive commercial 360-degree cameras is a technically demanding challenge. General open-source software (OSS) SLAM technologies show acceptable performance in research and validation settings, but consistently delivering stable performance in actual construction sites, where changing lighting, structural changes, and dynamic objects occur simultaneously, has remained an issue.
Kudan's commercial-grade Visual SLAM boasts high robustness, designed for use in real-world environments, enabling both easy capture using commercially available cameras and the generation of highly practical spatial data. The technology serves as the foundation that transforms on-site footage from a mere record into spatial information usable for construction management, contributing significantly to the commercial realization of this service.
In bringing this service to market, log build and Kudan combined log build’s practical operational expertise cultivated at construction sites with Kudan’s commercial-grade Visual SLAM technology. The two companies have repeatedly conducted verification and refinement at actual construction sites. Representative Director Kenichi Nakahori personally served as a site supervisor and has been involved in the construction industry for approximately 30 years. He also leads ecomo, a construction firm based in Shonan, Kanagawa, that he has transformed into one of Japan’s leading Smart Builders — a company that combines the realities of the construction field with the frontier of DX. By combining this on-site understanding with spatial perception technology, the two companies have optimized their platform to create an offering that can be utilized in the constantly changing real-world environment of construction sites.
log build positions the full-scale deployment at large-scale building and civil engineering sites of general contractors as the next strategic phase for this service.
Through its advanced spatial perception technology, Kudan provides a platform for accurately capturing and utilizing the physical world in the digital realm. Going forward, Kudan will continue to address industry challenges such as labor shortages, productivity improvement, and the advancement of remote management by providing technologies that support the capturing, visualization, and utilisation of on-site data, thereby contributing to the acceleration of the DX in the construction industry.
High-precision digitization of on-site space also serves as a foundation for Physical AI and robotics. By providing spatial perception technology that enables machines to understand the physical world and to autonomously make decisions and act, Kudan will contribute to further automation and advancement in construction and other real-world industries.
The impact of this disclosure on the current period’s performance has already been reflected in the earnings forecast, and no additional impact is currently expected. Should any developments requiring disclosure arise in the future, the Company will promptly announce them.
About Kudan Inc.
Kudan provides spatial perception technology, described as “eyes for all machines”, that drives the advancement of Physical AI and plays a pivotal role in next-generation digital twins and robotics. This spatial technology perceives the real world and creates digital twins that AI can analyse. Kudan thereby contributes to the digital transformation (DX) of operational management and improved productivity. Furthermore, the company offers fundamental technologies that enable robots to digitally perceive their surroundings and achieve autonomous mobility in complex environments.
For more information, please refer to Kudan’s website at https://www.kudan.io/.
■Company Details
Name: Kudan Inc.
Securities Code: 4425 (TSE Growth)
Representative: CEO Daiu Ko
About log build Inc.
log build is an exceptionally rare construction-tech company — an IT firm led by an active construction-company executive. Representative Kenichi Nakahori served as a site supervisor and became an entrepreneur at age 26. He continues to serve as representative of ecomo, one of Japan’s most advanced DX-enabled construction firms, which is visited by more than 100 companies each year, and has been involved in the construction industry for approximately 30 years as an executive with first-hand on-site experience. ecomo advocates the “Smart Builder” concept, is known in the industry as the “pen-less construction firm,” and has received extensive media coverage. log build was founded in 2020 together with engineers who previously worked on image analysis for AIBO and PlayStation at Sony, building a distinctive development model that “starts from the voices of the field and solves them with world-class technology.”
The company’s remote-management platform “Log System” is used at over 80,000 construction sites, ranging from house builders and local construction firms to major general contractors, placing it among Japan’s top-tier remote management platforms by scale of operation. In addition, log build offers “Remote Daikou,” Japan’s first Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) service that enables remote on-site supervision of craftsmen.
This system, managed by a dedicated remote management team based in Minato Mirai, Yokohama, utilises 360-degree VR for remote inspections and video calls with on-site tradespeople to ensure inspections are conducted to the same standard across all buildings, thereby enabling data-driven quality and safety management. This new business model, which goes beyond simply providing software to actually undertake and support on-site operations, has reached a unique position in the construction industry.
■Company Details
Name: log build Inc.
Place: Fujisawa, Kanagawa
Representative: Kenichi Nakahhori
URL: https://www.log-build.com/
■Contact Information
For more details, please contact us here
