Inside look at Callaway's AI technology, just a picture.

[dre72]

So I was at my local Dick's trying to dial in my SIM driver on their LM. As I was talking to the manager about the numbers I noticed a Epic Flash SZ that the crown was broken off. Out of curiosity i picked it up and took a pic of the AI technologically advanced face. First time I had seen the inside of one of these and snapped a quick pic. Before anyone accuses me of being the culprit, I swear it wasn't

[AmazinBlue]

Is it just me, or does that not look all that technologically advanced? Marketing scam?

[Fuscinator]

Pretty soon, the machines will take over, playing golf and using us as their slaves/caddies.

[Sean2]

Skynet will be going live soon...

[Fuscinator]

???

[jvincent]

There are other pictures of the back of the face that show the irregular shape better. Based on the performance, I'd say there is definitely some technology going on.

Is the whole "AI" thing a marketing scam? I'm tempted to say yes, at least a bit. The marketing talks about how AI helped design the face blah, blah, blah. I suspect that the "AI" is really just a set of parameterized finite element analysis runs with some post processing to filter out bad results. Run enough jobs and you get millions (?) of virtual prototype runs of a face design that you can choose a small subset for testing.

[ry1808]

Working for an engineering company that uses AI this is 100% true what Callaway are doing.

 

The art to good AI is refining the end criteria of how they want the face to react. There is real skill going on here and some fantastic engineering principles.

 

In the AI world we will get to a stage where algorithms will be able to solve problems faster and more efficient that humans. The difficulty is, as I said, defining the parameters for these algorithms.

 

I predict the next area of golf development with AI is the ball. It wouldn’t surprise me if it isn’t going on already, we just don’t know about it.

[AmazinBlue]

Okay, good to know. Glad it's not just hype

[ThreeBoxers]

It's "Artificial Intelligence" in the sense that the computer knows to try a new geometric pattern to further optimize previous computation results based on the defined parameters, as has been mentioned. Is it Skynet? No. Is it JARVIS in Tony Stark's home? Also no. Is it even Siri? No. It's iterative computing done in an automated manner that would take a human much much much longer to run manually. It's probably new in golf R&D and honestly a good idea, but if you swing by an engineering college, you can swing a dead cat and hit a grad student who's running some kind of iterative computing MATLAB program.

In my (very humble as I am but a lowly mechanical engineer and not a computer scientist) opinion, referring to iterative computing as true AI is a bit of a stretch seeing as I'd wager money that Callaway's face design algorithm won't be passing any Turing tests...

Full disclosure, I'm very biased against marketing. Had to schedule a meeting in a conference room over by our marketing department and some of the posters they have up just made me shake my head.

[Ger21]

Google "Generative Design".

[lookylookitzadam]

Their AI is just a machine learning algorithm that is adjusting a meshed surface for variable thickness of the linked nodes. It changes thickness of "X" nodes based on impact parameters with the end goal of being highest speed output from the collision. It just iterates for thousands, millions? of times before it is "optimized". It is just min-maxing a solution which has been done for years in other industries but it is finally becoming cheap enough to utilize it for consumer products.

[Valtiel]

Exactly, this is why it is frustrating to hear things like what @AmazinBlue said above. This is why companies work SO hard sometimes to make their tech look $exy, because it rarely does! Its engineering nuance to squeeze the most out of something within a limited set of parameters, it is not going to look like a Michelangelo.

[J13]

It is (referring to the ball).

[Lincoln_Arcadia]

Python is what most of us use these days. It’s more compatible with Keras and Tensorflow. Not saying I’m a grad student. I’d be one of the oldest LOL

I agree with your reasoning though. They likely ran a structural analysis and instead of a linear parametric change they likely used a more rapidly converging algorithm based upon learned data from past designs?

Something like that, and it saves some intern his sanity instead of having to wait for every simulation to complete.

[SubaruWRX]

 

[Valtiel]

It seems like they probably up the contrast/black values to exaggerate the curves in the Flash Face images, but the concept is still sound IMO.

[DFS PFD]

Looks exactly like it's supposed to.

[AmazinBlue]

To the layman, the curves in the Flash face look somewhat random. I'm not criticizing Callaway or claiming that their r&d is BS. I was just commenting on what I saw in the picture. I think it would be cool to see the computerized pictures of what the face does upon contact.

We all want to hit the ball 300 or more and the OEM's marketing do their best to convince us that each iteration is enough to spend 550+. I think we should maybe wait about 3-4 years between driver purchases to see real changes.

Although I found a TI version of a SLDR driver and I think it may be as long or longer than my current driver. The ball flight is certainly better. I need to get on LM to verify.

[J13]

It's amazing how much Cally spends on R&D compared to all of the other OEM's. I think they spend more than all other companies combined, something crazy like that. I've been to their R&D facility in Carlsbad and its EXTREMELY impressive. AI is the future in club design optimization, it's just a matter of when the other companies can afford to do it. Balls are the same way.

[bu11dog]

Is that the Venom symbiote inside the club head? Is that the AI we've been talking about? We're doomed!