This Week in Jacksonville: Business Edition – City advancements in innovative tech companies

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Jacksonville continues advancing as a region full of innovative technology companies. One of those is Duos Technology Group, led by CEO Chuck Ferry.

Ferry joins us on This Week in Jacksonville: Business Edition, along with Doug Recker. Recker has just been appointed president of Duos Edge.

Ferry said Duos Tech has about 75 employees and is headquartered in Jacksonville.

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“The company basically specializes at this moment in a cutting-edge technology called the Railcar Inspection Portal,” Ferry said. “And what the railcar inspection portal does is basically a large car garage.”

Ferry said the product sits on a set of railroad tracks, but it’s got machine vision cameras, lighting lasers and speed sensors. It takes images topside and bottom of a speeding train at 70 miles an hour plus and then creates those images so they can be viewed on a computer screen.

The point is safety.

“We also apply machine vision and artificial intelligence that then automatically finds mechanical defects which are then used by the railroads to repair those cars. We have ten patents on that. Equipment has all been created here in Jacksonville by our engineers and our developers. And so that’s been our primary core business.”

Part of the growth in the industry is where Recker comes in.

“I’ve been in Jacksonville about 23 years now and started three businesses here,” Recker said. “One colocation big data center here called Colo Five, very successful in this town as far as the pull of I.T. And the talent that’s here… that’s one of the main reasons I stay here.”

Ferry and Recker describe the innovative technology, the opportunity for expansion, and how the workforce is adapting to the needs of the industry.

“And then we started another company called Edge Presence, which we sold last year and we’re starting it again under Chuck,” Recker said.