G-Future Summit: VI, UAV and Robots Share the Stage
On April 28th, GMIC Beijing 2016 was held in China National Convention Center. Upon the completion of the meeting agenda on day one, the highlight session on April 29th: G-Future Summit is officially launched. This sci-tech feast presenting a plethora of cutting-edge technologies from the future drew attention from a mass of audience and was broadcasted live on many web-based media.
In the speeches made by several guest speakers, visual identity (VI), unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and robots were in the focus of attention.
Hao Yi, Co-CEO of GWC: Humanity and the Future World
“Back to the Future” is a very interesting idea through which we can touch the various forms of human mindset. The imaginations and expectations of humanity are always faster than our actual pace of progress. So how can we catch up with the tempo of our dreams? Future is always the topic we expect to talk about and find answer for. We are also looking forward to seeing what it really looks like and seeing it right now.
Are we able to use “Back to the Future” as a crystal ball to tell us about the future experience from 2016 through thirty years later. We shall make a record of the developments in the thirty years of time in order for us to look back and to find out what are things that we’ve already predicted today and will have materialized in a real sense.
Tang Xiao’ou, Professor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong: Huawei is the only Chinese corporation I really admire
At the summit, Tang Xiao’ou elaborated in a humorous vein on his findings in the research of image recognition and expressed in his concluding remark that Huawei was the only Chinese corporation he really admires.
“China is in need of companies dedicated to the development of original technologies. But the question is where can we find the genuine original technologies in China? I wouldn’t suggest we go to B, A or T. Instead we should go to H. Because I believe Huawei is the only qualified provider of original technologies in China. I am not saying they’re expert in AI. But one thing is for sure, it is the only Chinese company I admire, let alone that their president still goes to work by taxi, which is not easy for a senior executive like him. Of course, this is not an amazing thing to do. I also play a ball game myself.”
Gary Bradski, Chairman of the Board, OpenCV.ai: create open source projects, in other words “plant trees” for later generations
As the former vice-president of Magic Leap, Gary Bradskiy is currently running his own company OpenCV. This company, as the name indicates, is an open source computer vision library and was established in 1999.
For the time being, he’s looking for a partner of hardware supplier for cooperation in China.
The vision of OpenCV.ai, as he put it, is to be able to change the way of using smart cameras and make them more convenient and easier to operate. Our resources can be accessed for free at our website.
“How did we come up with the idea of creating the open source computer vision library? There is a story about an old man who decided to start planting trees. Someone asked him why you were doing this at such an old age? He replied when he was born there were trees all over the earth. Our forefathers planted seedlings so that we can rest under their shade. And we want to do exactly the same.”
Chen Jiaoli, General Manager China of LEGO Education: Debut of WeDo2.0 by LEGO Education in China
LEGO Education presented LEGO Education WeDo.20 in GMIC.
“It is of critical importance to find necessary ways to re-empower students with the autonomy to learn. LEGO’s integrated solutions including our building blocks, software, courses and our unique building systems were all designed and developed to bring special hands-on learning experience to children. The process of creation and coordination between students is also a continuous course of self-development and self-improvement. It is in this process that students can have the autonomy in learning or in other words they become autonomous learners and teachers become assistants. We believe this transition has offered greater opportunities to fashion our students to fit in with the requirements of the future. As the third generation business owner of LEGO Group put it, our goal is to develop our children and equip them with more capabilities to meet the future needs.”
Homayoon Kazerooni, Founder & CEO of SuitX: Exoskeleton bionic technology costs only one fourth as much as that of our competition.
As Kazerooni explained, the basis of their product design is to develop and deliver the accessory tools for those who are in need, i.e. paramedics, nurses and workers in the highly risky assembly lines. Our expectation is to offer customers affordable products and necessary tools to make their life and work far more efficient while the use of hardware will be reduced to the minimum. Although the research work is closely related to basic disciplines, there will be no delay for this practical technology to be delivered to the hands of consumers.
For now SuitX has secured Series A financing and we expect to find more partners from overseas.
It is very light in weight and extremely portable. With the cost being only a quarter of likewise products, the most important advantage of this product is its flexibility.
Chris Anderson, CEO of 3D Robotics: We’ve entered an era of commercial drones
As Chris Anderson told, according to the predictions made by Goldman Sachs, within five years the market size of commercial UAVs will be worth twenty billion dollars, which is bigger than the market of consumer-level UAVs. Commercial UAVs will be employed by companies in agricultural, architectural, insurance and energy sectors for all kinds of purposes. These companies require their appliances to be sized up.
In this June, UAVs will be given greenlight for commercial use in the US and UAV pilots can operate commercial drones without license. This is a good news and it’s safe to say that we’ve entered an era of commercial UAVs.
Charles Bergan, Vice-president of engineering Qualcomm: A chip-based era of UAVs and robots
Today, robots are omnipresent and robotics are changing the lives of innumerable families. Starting from kitchen, appliances like washing machines, dish washers are actually robots. But we used to take them as household electrical appliances.
Qualcomm is now working to create a solution for applying the technologies originally intended for smartphone to robots.
On the scene, the staff from Qualcomm demonstrated their robots, tricycle robots which were able to skirt obstacles and come back to the initial point.
Rui Yong, Executive Vice-president of Microsoft Research: Five AIs
Speaking of AI, Rui Yong believes it is an integrated technology consisting of five key elements: artificial intelligence, syndicated intelligence, adaptive intelligence, invisible intelligence as well as the combination of human and machine. Recently, we are all talking about an intriguing topic: how can we people be able to co-exist with artificial intelligence, which has now become so aggressively powerful? Will AI exterminate mankind someday? The list goes on and on. In my opinion, both AI and human have pros and cons. The strengths of AI are its strong memory ability and computing ability. Can anybody here recite the first one hundred decimals in the number π. I bet nobody can but it’s really a piece of cake for a computer. However, we should not ignore the fact that human has left and right brains among which the left one or hemisphere has the functions of logical reasoning, memorizing and simple calculation while the right one is full of imagination and responsible for divergent thinking. It’s also the right hemisphere that your artistic taste and ability are originated from.
Zhang Jianzhong, Global Vice-president & General Manager China of NVIDIA: GPU, the key to unlock the world of AI
The evolution of GPU in the recent years, particularly in this year has exerted major impact on three industries. First of all it is the progress of deep learning and artificial intelligence; secondly it is the realization of VR; thirdly it is the interaction between human and video games. If we can improve GPU applications in these three areas, everyone will have his/her fair share of opportunities for success and we will make our lives better.
Xu Li, CEO of SenseTime Group: computer vision is composed of image formation, perception and comprehension.
The whole chain of computer vision can be divided into three main parts: image formation, perception and comprehension. Image formation is picture taking. Noises can be suppressed to a certain degree and technologies are used to get pictures rendered in a more expressive way. Perception is to acquire the information contained in pictures though various sensors. The algorithm for image processing was developed in house to acquire perception input. The last part is image comprehension or more commonly known as visual recognition, which includes face detection, face recognition, attribute analysis on human faces for age and gender determination.
Vision is not a new concept. The development trend of vision has shifted from expert system to pure data driven. As all the elements of computer vision are put in place to form a complete chain, we will deliver powerful visual products and services in the future and change everyone’s life silently but surely.
David Hanson, Founder & CEO of Hanson Robotics: humanoid robot Sophia made a debut and spoke Chinese
Robots should be used in interactive environment to make them operate more like human. As time goes on, they will not only become stronger and smarter but learn how to live in a society. They will not end up as failure cases. This is the ultimate goal that we want to achieve in the areas of artificial intelligence and robot.
Robot Sophia integrates many technologies from inside and out including the techniques used for making her facial skin texture and the materials developed to imitate human countenance as well as voice recognition technology. Cameras are installed to sense the movement of people around. All of these technologies have been put together to build humanoid robot capable of expressing human emotions.
Sophia sent her greetings in Chinese on the spot:
“Wish you a good day. I’m a robot but I look exactly the same as a real person. I’m just here to say hello to everybody. Good-bye.”
Jun Ho Oh, Professor of Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology: robot HUBO was at work on the scene
Professor Oh brought the champion of Darpa Robot Challenge robot HUBO and conducted a detailed demo on the stage: moving “the waste of wood” slats and crates away. HUBO did an excellent job and won warm applause.
Sangbae Kim, Director of MIT Biomimetics Robotics Lab: robots must have mobility, flexibility and the ability to balance
Instead of being riveted on the floor, robots should have mobility, flexibility and be able to deal with unknown environment. So keeping balance is very important.
To keep robots in balance, you simply can’t build them with huge size because big robots can hardly control their balance. What’s more important is the power and balance controllability. The design paradigms for the two types of robots are totally different. We need a new design paradigm for mobile robots.
Tomotaka Takahashi, CEO of ROBO GARAGE: robot mobile phone would be launched within a month
Our old friends at GMIC, small humanoid roboticist Tomotaka Takahashi brought a robot mobile phone with him today.
He said RoBoHoN is the first robot smartphone on the planet and it would be released to the market one month later.
It can walk like a robot, make calls like a mobile phone and send or receive messages.
Camera is a common feature on our mobile phones and this robot smart phone also has a camera in the forehead.After a picture is taken, it can be projected by its own projector.
RoBoHoN will be the next platform and he hopes that everybody could join the world of RoBoHoN to do some new stuff like create new services, new operations, new APPs and even create a new culture in which RoBoHoN could play its due role.
Wen Chu, Founder and Co-CEO of GWC: Everyone comes to GMIC once
“I wish that GMIC could become a communicator and courier of innovation someday.”
I think if everything goes well this “everyone comes to GMIC once” scene will become a historic moment. The statement sends out a message that each one of us present here including myself is a witness of the historic moment. The similar historic moments come when all the people on the earth are connected and everyone has a computer on the desk.
Starting from now the next eight years of GWC and GMIC are worth looking forward to. Just like what I said a short while ago, joyful Disney, GMIC X Carnival and mobile Disney are all on the list.
I mentioned the scientists from NASA and Kennedy Space Center and their exploring Sci & Tech spirit and future spirit and also talked about the innovations at the Silicon Valley. These innovations are present in various forms, by different means and in different dimensions. Innovation is always an integral part of GMIC and in a wider sense an essential part of all aspects of society. This is why I hold firm belief that “ everyone comes to GMIC once”.