A theme park in central Taiwan has adopted four autonomous shuttle buses developed by Turing Drive, according to Turing CEO David Shen.Two of the autonomous buses running in the 200-hectare Lihpao Resort are six meters long and the other two are four meters, said Shen, adding that each of them is equipped with four core systems - positioning, sensing, decision-making and control -in fusion, and the sensing system mainly consists of automotive cameras, radars and LiDARs.Turing, for operation of the autonomous shuttle buses, adopts InVignal, a V2N (vehicle to network) platform developed by International Integrated Systems for sending traffic lights information to autonomous buses. The buses' running data are transferred to a platform of integrated information on operation of autonomous vehicles, with the platform jointly developed and established by Chunghwa Telecom and Wistron.The platform has accumulated autonomous vehicles' operating data for 200 hours, according to Wistron.The autonomous buses shuttle among Discovery World, Mala Bay (water-based), Sky Dream (the largest Ferris wheel in Taiwan), Escape Rooms, Lihpao Racing Park, Lihpao Outlet Mall and Fullon Hotel for 12 round trips a day.Autonomous shuttles buses at Lihpao ResortPhoto: Company

Silicon Valley-based Kiwi Campus is a startup dedicated to operating a semi-autonomous robotic platform for delivering foods, beverages and groceries to consumers on college campuses and in neighboring communities. The company, attracted by Taiwan's sound business climate, robust hardware manufacturing, and R&D prowess, is planning to set up operations in the country, according to company founder Felipe Chavez Cortes.He was recently in Taipei to assess the feasibility of establishing an R&D center, a robot assembly and test team and a business operation unit in Taiwan. In an interview by Digitimes, he talked about his firm's service platform and investment roadmap in Taiwan.Q: What drove you to set up Kiwi Campus?A: While still a student at the University of Los Andes in Columbia I got the idea of developing campus economy, believing that time was ripe for operating an automatic robot food delivery platform. We founded Kiwi Campus after spending one month studying the sharing economy, supply chain and AI-enabled autonomous driving technology.We later joined the Skydeck Acceleration Program hosted by the University of California, Berkeley, which became our first institutional angel investor and technology consultant. This also gave us access to resources from California State University through the Deep Drive research project, enabling us to get funds and AI technology needed to build robots.About two and a half years ago, we moved and officially registered our company in Silicon Valley.Q: What is your business model?A: We want to create a balanced market economy, allowing users to happily pay US$1 or lower to get delivery service for foods and merchandises they need and available within two square miles via semi-autonomous robots.Our revenues mainly come from restaurants or suppliers of products for sales in automatic vending machines. We charge 15% of product price as service fee.For the moment, we offer services at two universities and their neighboring communities. One is UC, Berkeley, with its nearby stores and consumers contributing 70% of our revenues there. Another is the University of Denver in Colorado.Meanwhile, our colleagues are making preparations for launching services at another 12 university campuses. We hope that our company can start operations in Taiwan in 2020.Q: What does Taiwan interest you most?A: As our robots are now manufactured in Shenzhen, China, we want to find a university campus nearer the hardware manufacturing base. Also, we need to find a place in Asia to set up a team with strong R&D momentum, and this is why I am in Taipei, where I hope to meet with potential talent and see if there is a chance of establishing an R&D team. I believe that with its high population density and strong consuming power, Taiwan will be a market highly fit for the services we offer.As the TensorFlow platform we use is developed by Google and China bans the use of Google map, we have no other choice but to do the robot assembly and test in the US, which is quite inconvenient for us. This has prompted us to seek a proper place near Shenzhen, where our robotic components are manufactured, to assemble them into robots and do final test. I think robots can be well assembled and tested in Taiwan and then directly offer services to local consumers, given the country's strong ICT manufacturing capability and competitiveness.Q: Is National Taiwan University (NTU) the campus you just mentioned? How will you work with it?A: Besides NTU, we will explore the possibility of cooperating with all other universities in Taiwan. We have amassed abundant experiences in successfully cooperating with university students in the US to deliver foods, beverages and groceries via robots to consumers on campuses and in neighboring communities, and such a cooperation model will also be applied here.Q: How has business been since your company started official run two years ago?A: We completed over 70,000 transactions in 2018 and now register a weekly average of 3,000 deals. If you visit UC, Berkeley, you will find our robots shuttling around. Population density and cooperation with the supply chain are crucial factors for our business. Based on our calculation, one-trip delivery cost for one robot can be covered by fulfilling two service orders in Taipei, and one automated robot can handle 4-5 orders per trip.Q: How is AI applied to your services?A: Our robots adopt Level 2 autonomous driving technology and our artificial neural network enables the robots to automatically move in the middle of sidewalks, shun obstacles and recognize images, street corners and traffic lights. Each robot is equipped with six camera lenses and a Jetson TX2 computer with GPU computing capability, but at low power consumption. We use machine learning and deep learning to train our robots, enabling them to adjust moving speeds and directions in accordance with road conditions, yet without using high-end sensing or LiDAR devices.Q: Will you use the robots to collect big data for future commercial applications?A: Our neural networks will not record road images but can collect data concerning traffic jams and time slots, as well as networking quality. But it will require many more robots if we want to collect sufficient data for useful applications. In this aspect, we will move to discuss with city governments on possible cooperation.Q: What about your business development plan for the next 5-10 years?A: We are mulling setting up robot-operated smart city systems, allowing people and enterprises to access our robot platforms to live in smart cities, which will be our ultimate goal. Actually, we have started building vertical high-frequency trading marts or platforms by combining robots and cities.Q: How about your company's current market valuation ? Will you have a new round of fundraising activity?A: The current market valuation of our company is around US$4 million, and we are proceeding with a second-round financing plan seeking to raise US$15 million in the first or second quarter of 2020. Meanwhile, we hope to kick off our services in eight cities in 2020, with one in Asia, hopefully Taipei. And our business goal for next year is to complete one million transactions with 1,000 robots. Kiwi Campus founder Felipe Chavez CortesPhoto: Michael Lee, Digitimes, November 2019

After a disappointing year, the memory industry is expected to recover in 2020, thanks to momentum coming from 5G-driven demand. Memory module makers and their backend partners have already seen demand picking up, with memory chip vendors expected to ramp up supply next year. In China, its campaign to raise semiconductor self-sufficiency has seen its Big Fund invest in Shenzhen-based Longsys, which specializes in the OEM and ODM manufacturing of flash-based storage devices. Meanwhile, Apple reportedly will launch a new 13.3-inch MacBook Pro upgraded with a scissor switch keyboard in first-half 2020.Memory module makers, backend houses see demand pick up: Memory module manufacturers and backend service providers have seen end-market demand pick up recently, and are gearing up to meet 5G-driven demand with their sufficient supplies next year, according to industry sources.China memory module firm Longsys gets support from Big Fund: To further nurture its own memory industry, China's second national IC industry investment fund, also known as Big Fund Phase II, has recently invested in Longsys Electronics, becoming the second largest shareholder of the Shenzhen-based memory DMS company, according to industry sources.Apple to intro 13.3-inch MacBook Pro featuring scissor switch keyboard in 1H20: Apple's new 13.3-inch MacBook Pro series slated for launch in the first half of 2020 will also feature a scissor-switch keyboard, a design found in its recently-introduced 16-inch MacBook Pro lineup, according to industry sources. ODM Wistron and Global Lighting Technologies (GLT), a provider of light guide plates, are both among the suppliers for the keyboards for use in the devices.

The handset supply chain is expected to bid farewell to 2019 with much improvements from those disappointing results seen during the end of 2018 when the handset market was hit by a demand chill. Taiwan-based PCB makers have seen order visibility extend to early 2020, and they are now ready to keep production running during the Lunar New Year holidays in late January. In the semiconductor sector, the supply chain has seen strong potentials from SiC MOSFETs. In a recent interview by igitimes, Hestia Power CEO Lee Chwan-ying talked about the development of SiC MOSFETs.PCB production lines may remain humming during Lunar New Year: Taiwan-based PCB makers are planning to maintain normal production during the Lunar New Year holidays in late January thanks to clear visibility of orders from Apple and Chinese handset vendors extending to early 2020, according to industry sources.SiC MOSFET development: Q&A interview with Hestia Power CEO Lee Chwan-ying: SiC MOSFETs sees fast development and growing demand due to needs for high-voltage and high-power operating environment, but it is quite impossible for them to completely replace Si IGBTs (insulated gate bipolar transistors), according to Lee Chwan-ying, CEO of Hestia Power.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has recently teamed up with robot developer Nexcobot to jointly develop a smart robotic solution, prodiving users from non-manufacturing industries with a modularized toolkit to reduce their learning curves and accelerate development of smart robots that suit their specific needs.Nexcobot, an affiliate of Nexcom Group, is primarily focusing on developing robotic arm products with an open platform, according to company general manager Jenny Shern.Shern pointed out that Nexcobot has received many inquiries from non-manufacturing industries, and expects demand from these areas to grow 15 times faster than that from conventional industries.However, for non-manufacturing industries to customize their robots for specific needs is a rather difficult task, and therefore, Nexcobot is hoping its cooperation with AWS can simplify the process. A combination of Nexcobot's Smart Robot Box with AWS' RoboMaker platform is expected to accelerate the development, testing and deployment processes.Users are allowed to develop and test robots via the cloud-based RoboMaker platform's simulation system and then synchronize their programs via Nexcobot's Smart Robot Box to their robotic arms or automated guided vehicles (AGV).So far, the biggest challenge in robotic application development is that there has not yet been an open standard and Nexcobot's Smart Robot Box with open architecture is able to resolve such a problem as most mainstream robot products available in the market are all supported by Smart Robot Box.Nexcobot general manager Jenny Shern (left)Photo: Chloe Liao, Digitimes, November 2019

The scale of 5G commercial services will gain momentum in 2020, fueled by new business opportunities arising from the growing 5G FWA (fixed wireless access) market and significant growth in the number of end market devices in terms of product categories and styles supporting 5G communications, according to Digitimes Research.The phenomenal growth of the 5G services is set to come even though the number of new 4G LTE networks is still growing steadily because of its mature supply chain and sound business model, Digitimes Research says.However, as of the end of October 2019, 46 telecom operators in 26 countries have kicked off commercial operations of 5G networks, and the number of operational 5G networks in the initial period is three times that of those during 4G services' initial runs, according to GSA (Global Mobile Suppliers Association).This phenomenon indicates that most countries and telecom operators around the world have been keen to accelerate the deployments of their 5G networks, GSA noted.Meanwhile, as of mid-October, the number of 5G end-market devices that had been introduced (including those not yet launched) has reached 172, mainly CPE (customer premises equipment) such as handsets and modules, GSA revealed.While the development of the mmWave network market has been slower than expected, 60 out of the 172 5G end-market devices support mmWave technology. Given that 61% of current 5G network operators are offering FWA services, the scale of the mmWave market is set to ramp up significantly.Digitimes Research believes that the development of the mobile network market will show a high degree of differentiation in 2020, with mobile service providers likely to offer both sub-6 GHz and mmWave services, or merely sub-6 GHz or 4G LTE services that will complicate the mobile chipset market.Chipset providers Qualcomm and Samsung Electronics are likely to offer multiple SoC solutions to meet demand from different market segments, while MediaTek and HiSilcon Technologies are expected to focus on sub-6 GHz segment, Digitimes Research says.

TSMC has committed to building its most advanced fabs in Taiwan, but that doesn't mean that it will stop expanding production capacity elsewhere, particularly China, which is home to some of its biggest clients. Both TSMC and UMC have plans to increase their 12-inch fab capacity in China to meet growing demand from the country's IC designers. But the US-China trade has indeed been sending more Taiwanese investors returning hom from China. Innolux has already commit over NT$70 billion to building production lines in Taiwan. Fellow panel makers, AUO and CPT, are also increasing investments in Taiwan.TSMC, UMC plan capacity expansions in China: TSMC and UMC both plan to expand production capacities at their 12-inch wafer fabs in China to satisfy growing demand from local chipmakers.Innolux pledges to invest NT$70.1 billion in Taiwan: Panel maker Innolux will invest over NT$70.1 billion (US$2.29 billion) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) has announced. The MOEA has issued a green light to the Innolux project, saying it is in line with the government's goal of encouraging Taiwanese firm to return and invest at home.

Taiwan-based InSynerger Technology has introduced cloud computing-based power management services by virtue of IoT, big data analysis and AI for non-residential users, according to company president Polon Chuang.InSynerger, spun off from government-sponsored Information Industry Institute (III) in 2017, uses IoT sensors to collect power consumption data from machines and equipment, and provides cloud computing-based platforms for users to improve power use efficiency and save energy, Chuang said. In addition to monitoring power use, power consumption data can be used in analysis to detect abnormal operating conditions for machines and equipment and optimize manufacturing processes, Chuang noted.Based on analysis of historical data on power consumption and relevant data such as output and working days, InSynerger predicts monthly power demand as reference for users to decide on optimal monthly contract capacity for electricity supply with state-run Taiwan Power Company (Taipower), Chuang indicated.If actual power consumption is below contract capacity, power billing is based on the contract capacity, but actual power consumption in excess contract capacity is subject to extra charge at a higher rate, Chuang explained. Therefore, it is the most appropriate that actual power consumption is equal to contract capacity, Chuang noted. In line with the prediction, InSynerger helps users control power use not to exceed contract capacity, Chuang said.InSynerger is cooperating with Taipower to develop a cloud computing-based ADR (automated demand response) platform to enable Taipower to reach smart real-time adjustment in distribution and supply of power based on actual demand.InSynerger Technology president Polon ChuangPhoto: Chloe Liao, Digitimes, November 2019

The worldwide top-5 notebook brands saw their combined shipments slip 13% on month in October 2019, better than that of the same month a year ago, thanks to some lingering seasonal demand and some brand vendors' strong enterprise product shipments, according to Digitimes Research.Hewlett-Packard's (HP) shipments plunged 16% on month in October due to its business restructuring and layoff. Lenovo had an over 20% on-month decline in the month because of China's weak domestic demand, Digitimes Research's numbers show.Dell was the only top-5 brand enjoying an on-month growth in October as a result of its strong sales in North America's enterprise market. Dell also surpassed Lenovo to become the second largest brand in the month in terms of shipments.The top-3 notebook ODMs saw their combined shipments drop in a scale similar to that of the top-5 brands in October with Quanta Computer producing the best results as its orders from HP had the least decline compared to those of its competitors.

For Taiwan to efficiently develop startups, it is imperative for the government to help young talent connect to Israel's startup ecosystem and bring back that country's entrepreneurship, according to TA Wang, chief of the Science and Technology Division at Taipei Economic and Culture Center in Tel-Aviv.Wang told Digitimes in a recent interview that around 350-400 startups are created in Israel per year, bolstered by a sound startup environment. He stressed that Taiwan has to first build a good startup ecosystem integrating technology, talent, funding and environment if it wants to boost the survival rate of the country's startups.Taiwan should also learn from the innovation environment and self-confidence of startups in the Silicon Valley and Israel, and bring talent and funds into full play, Wang said, adding that such efforts will likely bear fruit in the near future.Without an automaking industry, Israel has become a global automotive technology center, with at least 15 first-tier international automakers setting up operating offices there, as over 300 startups are now engaged in developing autonomous driving, Internet of Vehicles (IoV) and other automotive solutions there, according to Wang.Wang cited Israeli government statistics as indicating that Israel now has over 300,000 people or 9% of its population engaged in the tech sector, with their average monthly pay reaching US$6,800.He said the impressive figures have resulted from hundreds of international tech firms including heavyweights as Intel, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon all setting up operations in Israel, offering over 100,000 R&D jobs.