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Friday, October 7, 2016

Connecting society, creating the future

by Mark Ollig

Copyright © 2016 Mark Ollig


Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies (CEATEC) of Japan, boldly promotes its vision to “change almost everything.”

Creating value through the application of digital information collected from IoT (Internet of Things) electronic sensors and devices, is part of this vision.

CEATEC hopes to bring positive changes to existing industrial standards, business models, and societies through “new value” creation.

Last week, CEATEC held a four-day technology symposium in the Makuhari Messe convention center, located just outside of Tokyo, Japan.

This year’s theme was “Connecting Society, Creating the Future.”

Beginning in 2009, CEATEC has now become a popular Asian venue for drawing attention to futuristic technology concepts, and business prototypes.

There were an estimated 150,000 people attending this year’s event. The CEATEC convention is considered the largest high-tech conference in Asia.

Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) looks at and analyses the data provided from IoT devices, and organizes it into meaningful information to be used by industry, business, and individuals. This year’s showcase feature was called Cyber Physical Systems, and the Internet of Things (CPS/IoT).

Approximately 650 technology companies participated during this year’s CEATEC.Of these, 195 represented 24 countries and regions outside of Japan; including 27 from the US.

There were a total of 1,710 product and technology-related display booths during the event. Some of the better-known companies at CEATEC included: Fujitsu, Honda, NEC, and Panasonic.

The symposium was divided into four exhibit areas.

The Community Area showcased technology for ensuring safe communities through the managing of public infrastructure and transportation systems. It also addressed technology to be used for dealing with disasters, local energy consumption, and monitoring of the environment.

The Town Area highlighted technology for assisting cities with providing comfortable and healthy living and work areas. It also displayed technology for improving various town services provided for the population.

The Home Area centered on relaxed and fulfilling lifestyles by way of digital entertainment immersion. This area also demonstrated AI (artificially intelligent) robotic technology for supporting one’s lifestyle, healthcare, and health-assistance needs.

Yours truly has written columns over the years about Japan’s progress in the field of AI robotics. In the near future, we will see several categories of robotic technology being used in our homes, professional healthcare and assisted living facilities, and of course; in the workplace.

The CPS/IoT Technology & Software Area highlighted electronic components, materials, and software needed for creating future technology to be used with CPS/IoT.

The Fujitsu folks demonstrated a friendly-looking, talkative, artificially intelligent robot called RoboPin.

RoboPin, according to Fujitsu, provides a “humanized experience” to whoever it is conversing with. This likable, approximately 12-inch-tall robot, happily greeted visitors during CEATEC.

RoboPin is linked to and can access information from the Internet. With its six moveable joints, RoboPin expressed a variety of emotions including: happiness, liveliness, sleepiness, and even sadness to the folks attending the event.

RoboPin’s audible assistance used a pleasant voice, friendly hand gestures, and head movements. It also changed facial color; determined upon the emotion it was expressing.

RoboPin recommended specific exhibits for a visitor to see based on their registration profile; such as job title, and listed interests.

A small, wireless electronic “beacon tag” device worn by each attendee recorded which exhibits and vender displays they stopped at. Accessing the beacon tag information, RoboPin would offer its “personalized recommendations” of other related exhibits or conferences to see.

You can watch RoboPin in action at: http://tinyurl.com/bits-RoboPin.

StradVision, Inc., with offices in San Jose, CA, demonstrated its Advanced Driving Assistance Systems (ADAS) using its object detection and recognition software.

ADAS also provides recognition software for wearable devices, smart homes, and of course, those supposedly-smart, autonomously-driven cars.

A demonstration of their instant language translation program using a smartphone was impressive. The ADAS language demo showed a sign written in Japanese, being instantly translated to English using a smartphone.

Their website is located at: http://www.stradvision.com.

CEATEC desires to be a facilitator for bringing business and technology industries together across country boundaries, and encouraging their long-lasting relationships.

The English language website for CEATEC Japan is: http://www.ceatec.com/en.

Their YouTube channel is: http://tinyurl.com/bits-ceatec.

As always, you can follow me on Twitter at @bitsandbytes.