The Pandemic shows Human needs help from Robots

Tags

Artificial Intelligent, Robot, Technology, Window Cleaning

By Kyle Wong, Project Director, ACH Worldwide Limited

The COVID-19 crisis reminds us that human is vulnerable.  A tiny virus can bring the global economy to a standstill.  While the pandemic is slowing in many countries, we know that it is a matter of time humans will be hit by another pandemic.  We must be prepared.

One way to reduce the damage brought by the pandemic is to accelerate the deployment of robots in various industries.  With the advance of sensors, artificial intelligence and precision engineering, robots are taking over more and more jobs from humans.  One such job is window cleaning.  Over the last hundred years, the technology of window cleaning has barely changed.  It requires human workers and put the lives of the workers in danger.

Fortunately, an Israeli startup, Skyline Robotics, created Ozmo, the first intelligent window cleaning robot.  Ozmo not only saves lives but also time.  It can be 6 times faster than human workers.  Combining Artificial Intelligence and state of the art robotics and sensors, Ozmo™ was designed to clean a building without changing or adding any infrastructure. Ozmo™ learns the building’s façade, detects the nuances of complex architecture in order to create the most effective cleaning path.

Ozmo is also friendly to the environment.   Ozmo cleans windows without using any chemicals and detergents through its reverse-osmosis technology. This specialized system creates highly purified water, free from contaminants and minerals, and dissolves dust, oils, and stains, leaving windows spotless.

China is well known for its many skyscrapers.  We believe the robotic technology from Skyline Robotics will be most welcome in this region.  The robots are not only safer and faster but can make the building cleaner.

Move-It Creates Home Gym & Facilitate Home Rehabilitation!

Tags

Gym, Technology, WFH, Work Form Home

Due to COVID-19 pandemic, people are recommended to reduce social contact. Adults are asked to work from home, students are forced to study at home and patients prefer to rehabilitate at home!

From Home Office to Home Gym

The global lockdown forces many workers to work from home and to practice social distancing. People around the globe keep in touch using FaceTime, Zoom and Team.  At the same time, the lockdown prevents many people from attending gyms while the pandemic reminds us to be more health conscious. Fortunately, a Hong Kong start-up Eggplant Technology with IoT products branded under Move-It brings the gym experience to home using apps and IoT devices like smart dumbbells and some other smart workout equipment. These devices measure the user movements so that the users can receive immediate feedback from live coaches anywhere in the world. All the data collected by the devices can help coaches monitor the progress of a user. With the advent of AR/VR, we believed that the home gym experience will become closer and closer to the real thing.

From Home Gym to Home Rehabilitation

Dumbbells are prevalently used in physiotherapy to help prevent injuries or in adding in the rehabilitation of an injury (Cornell, 2020). Dumbbells can target specific muscles in ligaments in abdomen, shoulder, chest and arm etc. Patients can use different weights of dumbbells (from low to high) to perform a proper form of exercise taught by physiotherapists, targeting the specific muscles in need of strengthening. Evidence suggested that exercising for 20-45 minutes, 3-4 times per week are effective on muscle strength, balance and frailty (Hartmann-Boyce, Davies, Frost, Bussey 2020).

This can reduce the service availability of some rehabilitation services such as Physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy, furthermore, it might not be feasible for some patient to access their rehabilitation program in hospitals.  Using Smart Dumbbell as an interactive workout device may allow physiotherapy, occupational therapy patients to perform rehabilitation exercises at home. This can reduce the social contact of patients from going out to hospitals for rehabilitation programmes and reduce the risk of infection.

Move-It Smart Solutions

Move-It Smart Dumbbell can be designed to sense and record a large variety of body movements. The duration, stability, accuracy and heartbeat will also be recorded while patients are doing their rehabilitation exercise. Exercise designed by health professionals can be pre-recorded in the Smart Dumbbell application and assign to patients daily according to their individual needs.

 

 

A technology breakthrough of 3D Sensor Chips for Machine Vision by an Israeli Start-up

Tags

Artificial Intelligent, Smart City, Technology

Article by: Dr. Kyle Wong – Project Director of ACH Worldwide Ltd.

We got a chance to meet global leading Israeli 3D Vision technology start-ups through participating in the Smart Mobility Summit 2019. The summit is hosted by Israel’s Prime Minister and provided a venue for a dialogue about the world’s most forward-thinking approaches to transportation, cutting edge technologies and future business models, and to promote Israel’s ambitious goal of reducing 60% of the country’s oil consumption by 2025.

The three major themes of the summit are e-mobility, which is the usage of electric vehicles to cut dozen emission.  The use of the electric engine is no longer confined to cars.  At the summit, we also see electric scooters (scooters are very popular in Israel), electric motorbikes and also trucks.   One advantage of Israel is the abundance of sunlight.  So it is a high priority of Israel to move away from fossil fuel.

Another theme is mobility as a service (MaaS).  The advance in driverless car technology will render vehicle ownership obsolete.  One of the things we learn in car ownership is that they are under-utilized.  Many of the car owners go to work on public transportation and only use their cars occasionally on weekends.  The utilization is low.  What if we can share cars, instead of owning them.  So an app will find the closest car in our neighbourhood and the car will pick us up and bring us to our destinations.  Through autonomous driving technology, those days are not too far away.  Many start-ups are working in building the infrastructure of MaaS such as ride-sharing apps and AI engines to optimize the movement of autonomous vehicles.

True autonomous driving maybe years ago.  But a smart city is already here.  In a smart city all aspects of transportation should be monitored, traffic congestions mitigated and violations reported and handled promptly.  It involves the use of cameras to monitor traffic patterns and violations.  The building of a smart transportation network is the third theme of the summit.   Start-ups have demonstrated AI systems to regulate traffic and to detect violations.

To allow for MaaS and smart city, sensors need to be placed on vehicles and roads.  So many exhibitors are LIDAR manufacturers.   One company which show huge promise in this area is Newsight Imaging (NSI).   NSI builds image sensors that can sense the world in 3D.  A game-changer in vision solutions for the automotive industry, drones, robotics, augmented and virtual reality applications, mobile smartphone market and industry 4.0.  The sensor is an integral part of the Lidar technology which is used in driverless cars and robotics to detect distance and 3D mapping.

Newsight innovative chip is ideal for applications that require the following characteristics:

• Cost-effectiveness – ideal solution for high volume and competitive markets
• Low power consumption – suitable for rechargeable and battery-operated products
• High performance – excellent for the application that requires intensive algorithms and calculations
• Analog and digital integration – non-disruptive coexistence

In fact, NSI announced in June the signing of a collaboration agreement with ZKW Group, a leading premium lighting systems and electronics specialist, headquartered in Wiesel burg Austria. ZKW’s affiliation with LG gives the company access to resources and key technologies to develop intelligent lighting for the future and autonomous driving.  NSI has a bright future ahead.

 

 

 

First Unicorn in Hong Kong: Klook

Tags

Technology, Unicorn, Venture Capital

Article by: Dr. Kyle Wong – Project Director of ACH Worldwide Ltd.

Five years ago, Eric Gnock Fah, the COO and co-founder of Klook, was staffing a small booth at Rise. Today, Klook is the first Hong Kong unicorn. It just received 150 million USD from Softbank’s Vision Fund. It received funding from some of the biggest VC funds including Sequoia China. The story of Klook offers many valuable lessons to anyone doing start up, especially in Hong Kong.

Klook means Keep looking. Their users can buy train tickets and even book restaurants. Most their most important products are day tour. The founding team was inspired by unique and special tour experience such as Parahawing in Nepal. it is a combination of fun, cultural as well as environmental experiences. However, Eric soon realised these unique experience, while sexy, are not very scalable and therefore hard to sustain a real business. So they turn to some boring but basic products such as transportation, theme parks and famous tour attraction. Currently user can buy all the train tickets in China, Japan, Taiwan on their web site.

However, Klook continues to work with bloggers and travel reporters to find unique and special travel ideas. To Klook Japan, especially with the coming of the 2020 Olympics, is a key market. They not only work with all the train companies in Japan, but now are offering onsen experience to the Klook’s customers.

Klook realised that many local tour operators are still quite manual and therefore not scalable. So Klook works with the operators to help them to go digitise their booking systems. Klook operates mostly day trip. They want to work with as many local operators as possible.

The fund raising experience offers valuable lessons to young Hong Kong entrepreneurs. When Klook first talked to Chinese investors, the investors have difficulty understanding the business model as they focus mainly inbound and the domestic market. But with more and more Chinese going outbound, they now realise the huge market potential. Hong Kong plays an important role in the global travel. Not only Hong Kong is a travel hub, people in Hong Kong love to travel and therefore can offer many exciting travel ideas. With Hong Kong right between the East and West, it will play a role to connect China to the rest of the world.

 

 

Combining AI and Robotics to Improve Supply Chain

Tags

Artificial Intelligent, Robot, Technology

Article by: Dr. Kyle Wong – Project Director of ACH Worldwide Ltd.

Logistics is a huge business. It is even bigger as e-commerce grows all over the world. However, it is also very labour intensive. According to the CEO of Geek+, Mr. Yong Zheng, logistic industry hires 140 million globally. It means that the labour cost is huge. The labour problem is compounded by the fact young people hesistate to enter the business because of the perceived tough working environment. Second challenge is that tradional automation method requires heavy capex which takes 7-10 yr. payback period. Lastly, there can be huge seasonal order flutuation. For example, during the 11.11 Festival in China, order can spike up 30%. So the robots must be highly adaptable.

Geek+ is formed to meet these challenges. It is the largest and most commercially proven independent logistic robotics player in the world. It is at the right place and at the right time. The global logistic and industrial robot market is expected to grow from 6 billion USD in 2018 to 35 billion USD in 2022, with a CAGR of 55%. In the same period the logistic and industrial automation total solution is expected to grow 3 times while intelligent supply chain is expected to grow 10 times.

Geek+ produces a wide range of logistic robots with indoor self-driving capabilities. They are already deployed in many different industries including the China Post Office, retail stores, garment manufracturer. The key is to their success is to combine AI and robotics to provide tail-made solutions to different companies. So Geel+ is not only selling robots, but total supply chain solutions combining AI, robots and big data. The solutions are not only cost-efficient but highly adaptable

As their customers utilizes more and more robots, Geek+ is building bigher and bigger robot network all over the world. They have currently deployed 7,000 robots globally and is currently engaged in more than 200 projects in multiple industries. As supply chains become automated, Geek+ has a bright future.

 

Impacts of the third Industrial revolution on China! 「第三次工業革命」的影響

Tags

China Economy, Cloud Computing, Internet, Technology, Third Industrial Revolution

「第三次工業革命」的影響

Hong Kong Economic Journal Monthly, Issue 436

Photo source: ashrafsouk.blogspot

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