Taiwan's LCD panel makers should develop more small- and medium-size panels for emerging applications that will come along with the rapid developments of 5G, IoT and IoV industries, according to industry observers.Taiwan's panel makers must turn their attention to new applications for small- and medium-size panels, as they have been absent in the race to build newer generation fabs such as 10.5G for capacity ramps, said the sources.However, the observers pointed out that the delpoyments of 5G networks in Taiwan alone are expected to create business opportunities of up to US$100 billion in terms of products and services starting in the latter half of 2019, and therefore willl also bring new applications for small and mid-size panels, added the sources.The development of IoV is also a mega-industrial trend, with most carmakers eager to develop smart driving technologies such as ADAS. In other words, the development of autonomous driving technology is likely to transform vehicles into offices, entertainment or communication centers that may need up to over 10 display products per vehicle.The rise of the IoT networks will also bring new business opportunities for panel makers, as connected IoT devices used in the manufacturing, medical care, vehicles and other applications all need an interface to interact with people, mostly using a display product, said the observers.As clients from various sectors have their own specifications, panel makers can develop customized products for different clients, leveraging different features of panels such as flexibility, high transparency, heat or cold resistance.

As the information application architectures in today's business sectors are increasingly interconnected, making it difficult for individual enterprises to safeguard their information security alone, Taiwan Mobile has recently launched a so-called "Information Security Cop" service to help enterprises protect their data.The challenges of information security are evolving rapidly under current hybrid environments where information networks of most businesses are connected with those networks of cloud service providers, suppliers, subcontractors and clients for information sharing, and therefore have made their networks vulnerable to attacks, according to TY Hsu, manager of enterprise integrated service department at Taiwan Mobile.The Information Security Cop protection solutions, which are co-developed with a number of international solution providers, are designed to provide effective all-in-one measures to protect corporate information from the cloud to devices against malware attacks such as Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS), Hsu said.Hsu continued that the previous model for the deployment of information security protection is to budget and purchase a protective solution or device for a single functional requirement such as for firewall, IPS, UTM and other systems. But current security situation is more complex that requires a set of technology to give effective protection from DDoS, APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) and other malwares.Also, under today's mainstream hybrid environments, the existing technologies like edge firewalls and VPNs are insufficient to secure complex multiple environments, Taiwan Mobile has also adopted Zentera Systems' CoIP Security Enclave products to enhance the capability of its security cop solutions, Hsu added.Taiwan Mobile has established a carrier-class backbone defense service architecture that can fend off DDoS attacks in large traffic, and additionally, Arbor APS (Availability Protection System) DDoS mitigation technology is also being adopted by its backbone networks to implement detailed protection against application layer attacks.Taiwan Mobile can also help build and manage UTM and other basic protective solutions for the core networks of its business clients, allowing them to build up necessary information protection without one-time large capital expenditure. Besides, Taiwan Mobile's Information Security Cop service team can also render assistant to help clients monitor and maintain these basic protective systems.TY Hsu, manager of enterprise integrated service department at Taiwan MobilePhoto: Digitimes file photo

IoT applications will see brand-new development after 5G technologies and applications enter commercial runs in 2019, and all IoT devices must feature low power consumption and high stability to secure smooth operations in diverse environments. In line with the trend, Taiwan's memory supplier Macronix International has rolled out the cutting-edge 1.2V MX25S SPI NOR series to meet the market demand, according to the firm's senior marketing manager HJ Kuo.Macronix's 1.2V MX25S SPI NOR series boasts extremely low power consumption, consuming only 0.007uA in the state of deep power down, compared to power consumption of 0.2uA for 1.8V and 3uA for 3V. In addition, under the operating mode, power consumption runs only one tenth that of 1.8V, according to Kuo.Kuo said that unlike 2G to 4G applications featuring transmission of voices, images and various data mainly through smartphones, 5G will allow telecom operators to extend services to a variety of new areas beyond smartphones through its features including high speed transmission, high coverage rate and low latency.She continued that 5G IoT will make everything in the world become "smart X," expanding from man-man and man-things linkages to things-things connections and finally building the architectures of smart cities, with big data generated to be developed into more digitalized application services.In terms of system equipment needed to support 5G IoT applications, power-saving, miniaturization and high quality will be the top three concerns for equipment makers in seeking supply chain partners. The requirements are also applicable to relevant memory solutions, Kuo indicated.HJ Kuo, senior marketing manager at Macronix InternationalPhoto: Digitimes file photo

YouCam beauty apps offered by Taiwan-based Perfect Corp have become the world's most downloaded beauty apps, scoring over 600 million global app downloads, with global beauty and makeup brands including Estee Lauder, L'Oreal and Shiseido among the firm's 150 loyal customers, according to company founder and CEO Alice Chang.The firm's YouCam Makeup app was rated as the best beauty app in May 2018 by the Cosmetic Executive Women Beauty Awards. Annual beauty awards are given to recognize the most innovative beauty products of the year.Perfect is the world's first tech player applying AR (augmented reality) to beauty apps, and its YouCam beauty apps will continue to expand the boundaries of AR beauty experiences and solutions with market-leading innovations driven by cutting-edge AI, Chang indicated.She continued that YouCam's deep learning algorithms will continue to create world-leading facial detection technology to redefine the consumer, brand, and retail beauty experience.YouCam beauty apps are designed to help users realize virtual beauty, Chang said. She furthered that with the AR technology, the virtual makeup effects and facial images of users can be integrated and projected to the screen, which will function like a "magic mirror" allowing consumers to complete makeup trials without using cosmetics.The company's YouCam apps attract over 12 million active users per day, with 35 million daily makeup trials. This enables the company to collect trial makeup data from app users and provide big data analysis for reference by providers of beauty care products and cosmetic makeup solutions.

While Taiwan electronics industry is aggressively mulling over how to tap the huge business opportunities to be created by quantum computers, the country's Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) has urged businesses to play a crucial role in commercializing genome editing applications. Both quantum computer and genome editing are deemed the two most important tech inventions that will affect human beings in the future.Tom Yeh, chief of the MOST's Science and Technology Division at Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in San Francisco, said that Jennier Doudna, a professor of chemistry, biochemistry & molecular biology at UC Berkeley, has her invention - genome editing technology - patented in the US in 2018 after obtaining a patent right from the European Patent Office in 2017.Yeh said the patent right means that gene editing efficiency is fast enough for industrial application, and can be further applied to botany, animal and human eukaryotic cells. As genome editing is regarded as a revolutionary technology that can subvert existing genetic disease therapies, many frontier tech firms are already racing to make deployments in relevant application fields to tap immense lucrative market opportunities, Yeh added.Yeh revealed that the cover of the July 2018 issue of the Trends in Cancer published by US-based Cell Press highlights a featured article jointly contributed by Doudna and two Taiwan post-doctorate researchers Huang Chun-hao and Lee Ko-chuan, with the article titled "Applications of CRISPR-Cas Enzymes in Cancer Therapeutics and Detection." In the article, the authors discuss the promises and hurdles in translating the revolutionary technology of genome editing into effective and safe clinical applications for cancer treatment and diagnosis.Yeh said that Doudna's research team has moved to transfer its research achievements to startups for industrial applications. Among the startups, Caribou Biosciences is dedicated to biomedicines, agricultural and biological infrastructure research; Intellia Therapeutics is devoted to studies on cancer and autoimmune diseases; and Editas Medicine focuses on evolutions of genetic medicines.Many more new functions and applications associated with genome editing are undergoing industrialization in Silicon Valley in 2018, Yeh indicated, adding that Mammoth Biosciences founded by Doudna's doctoral students, for instance, is engaged in using genome editing technology to detect DNAs of specific diseases.

When you look at any electronic engineering magazine these days there is certainly never a shortage of articles to read that relate in some way or other to the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT-based systems will, as we all know, serve a broad spectrum of different purposes, but some things remain fundamental to them all. Whatever the context in which this technology is going to be used, it is certain that there will be a need for ongoing access to the large quantities of data that are being generated, so that subsequent analysis, manipulation and comparison can be undertaken. Much of this activity will be done once the data has been transported from where it was originally acquired back to the cloud.In order to gain the required online connectivity for cloud-based operation it is necessary to specify a microcontroller unit (MCU) that encompasses the appropriate interface technologies - for wireline this could be through Ethernet, while for wireless this might be via use of Wi-Fi, ZigBee or Bluetooth protocols. As a greater variety of IoT applications emerge, each with their own very specific operational criteria, MCUs with much more expansive I/O capabilities will be called for.Figure 1. Industrial monitoring system with data being acquired from a sensor arrayA simple scenario is detailed in Figure 1, where a web server is being used to compile data coming from an array of sensor devices. Here the open source lwIP (lightweight IP) platform furnishes the TCP/IP stack needed for Internet connectivity. The web server code running on the MCU provides a web page through which all the acquired data can be viewed and analysed by a suitably trained member of staff. Depending on the nature of the application, the data may need to be dealt with in real time (for example, in a factory production line inspection system, where if a problem is identified then action will be required immediately). In such use cases, system latency can present a major problem, not allowing enough time for an appropriate response to be made if a situation arises that could have serious consequences - such as expensive items of machinery being damaged or the workforce located in the vicinity being put in danger.As already stated, currently the I/O resources of most MCUs are relatively limited and don't necessarily fully meet engineers' expectations. Devices are now being needed that offer a greater breadth of connectivity. At the same time they must be able to deliver elevated levels of operational performance too. Though a significant proportion of IoT applications will consist of large numbers of remotely-situated sensor nodes, with the focus being on maintaining low levels of power consumption and only supporting relatively limited data rates, there are plenty more scenarios besides these that will need the rapid transfer and processing of data. Key examples include home automation, industrial monitoring, utilities, etc.In contrast to the vast majority of MCU solutions on the market, which are focused mainly on providing a feature set that is supported through software, the FT90X series MCUs from Bridgetek execute the most of their functionality via hardware. This allows performance-optimized operation that is not available using conventional generic MCU platforms to be benefited from and makes them an attractive option for data-intensive, low latency tasks like the one described above.The advanced bridging technology built into these 32-bit RISC-based MCUs is pivotal to this. By making use of it, these devices can provide dedicated bridges between fast I/Os, allowing discrete elements of a design to gain access the most suitable hardware available. It means that interfacing of the different processing and I/O elements on the MCU can be done deterministic (without any latency problems arising). Using the company's proprietary FT32 core allows the ICs to deliver true zero wait state operation, reaching 310 DMIPS performance while running at a frequency of 100MHz. As well as accommodating both 10 Base-T (10Mbps) and 100 Base-TX (100Mbps) Ethernet connectivity, they also support CAN bus, I2C, USB and numerous other I/Os.If we return to our earlier example, shown in Figure 1, an MM900EVxA board (which integrates an FT90X MCU) can be allocated the role of the web server needed to take care of all the data being generated by the array of sensors in real time. Universal plug-and-play (UPnP) is implemented onto this hardware, which allows for it to be listed under "Other Devices" within the "Network" section of Windows Explorer and similar Internet connectivity platforms. This makes installation quick and simple to accomplish. The relevant network settings can be stored on the non-volatile memory that has been incorporated into the MM900EVxA board. This information resides in the lwIP library. The HTTPD application reads static and server-side-include files from the virtual file system. Server-side-include files are processed in the HTTPD application and include data is added via an application call-back function.(Editor's note: Gordon Lunn is technical marketing manager at Bridgetek.)

In line with the advent of the era of going digital fully, "maker and innovation" will become a new driver for the next wave of industrial revolution after Industry 4.0, and 3D software designers can help makers realize innovations more systematically and efficiently via incorporation of new technologies and establishment of app marketplace.But further refinement of 3D printing technology and reduction of application cost are crucial for determining whether the "maker" era can really come.In addition, changes in spending behavior of young consumers and their consuming preferences have driven qualitative changes of the entire manufacturing system. As Dassault Systemes has indicated, young consumers now boast much deeper understanding of products they purchase amid the increasingly close integration of digitalization and reality, and are able to easily define new products and catch up with the latest development trends.For manufacturers, how to secure a balance between profitability and quality and how to reallocate resources for product design and development and smooth commercial production process, so as to shorten the time to market and offer better customization services, has become a crucial task for them to pursue digital transformation.3D Experience platformIn order to brace for the arrival of digital transformation and experience economy, software providers have developed multiple updates of their existing design software platforms. Dassault Systemes, for instance, has incorporated VR (virtual reality) applications into its 3D Experience platform, so that the platform can better integrate diverse design and product life cycle management platforms operated by the company. US-based software developer PTC has also incorporated AR (augmented reality) and industrial IoT (Internet of Things) technologies to provide users with more convenient and appropriate design and management platforms.Accordingly, 3D design software functions have expanded significantly along with continued optimization of the software and incorporation of simulation, data visualization, AR, VR, and IoT functions. This will further pave the way for "makers" to develop and design innovative products.To satisfy the needs in the design and production process at a faster pace, 3D design software providers have raced to set up marketplaces for apps under their own platforms, seeking to break through the last mile for developers and "makers" to achieve fast product design and production through the support of third-party partners.Expanded 3D printing applicationsUndeniably, thanks to upgrades in printing speed and precision, the availability of printing materials and the reduction of overall printing costs, the application of 3D printing can be expanded to volume production of specific parts and components such as those for automobile and aerospace industries. Breakthroughs seen in 3D color and metal printing technologies have also helped broaden the overall application range of 3D printing.Nevertheless, it will still take time for 3D printing to be incorporated for volume production, and those firms who can develop innovations in printing materials, technologies and printer performance are likely to become winners in the market.

Google has successfully utilized machine learning technology to create accurate personalized, situational app recommendation systems, having boosted the installation rate for apps at Google Play by 3.3%, according to Chi Huai-hsin, Google's chief AI researcher.Chi, a native Taiwan talent, made the remarks when sharing his research team's AI-based app recommendation systems at a recent AI innovation boot camp activity held in Taipei.At the moment, there are over one million apps available for users of two billion active Android-based devices, and they saw over 82 billion downloads in 2017. All these related numbers will certainly continue to expand in the future, and how to boost the app installation rate has become a very important task for Chi's research team.Chi said that in order to provide users with better recommendation quality, Google's recommendation systems have three major principles to follow. First, recommended app contents must boast multiplicity and meet personalized needs. Second, the interfaces for all the app products must be constantly optimized with the assistance of machine learning. Third, Google recommendation systems must be applicable to all the users instead of specific ones.In order to increase app downloads from Google Play, user preferences must be known first, and personalized recommendation systems must be established to cater to the needs of different identities and age groups, Chi said.Then situational elements must be added to such systems to more accurately recommend apps to users. For instance, users of tablets usually prefer entertainment video apps, and smartphone users like to download apps associated with their daily lives such as living tools, emails, calendars, and notebooks. In addition, news apps usually see more downloads at daytime, while gaming apps are more preferred at night, according to Chi.

Originally developed by and for the military, drones have grown far beyond the battlefield and are now used everywhere from oil fields to private farms. They are being used for delivering packages, surveying land and assisting in disaster relief. Their scope is becoming ever more varied and their parameters are broadening.Key to the growing range of applications for drones is the increasingly sophisticated electronics systems being incorporated. The miniaturised sensors used in today's drones allows them to be ever smaller, more lightweight and more affordable, while improved machine vision (enabled by a new generation of powerful onboard flight control systems) is providing them with better autonomous navigation, obstacle avoidance, and real-time analytics.Drone development has traditionally been difficult, expensive and time-consuming, but today, the availability of drone development platforms has changed all that. New platforms from Intel, Infineon and Parallax are making it easier than ever to hit the ground running when implementing drone applications.Military originsEver since humans first took to the air, the idea of an unmanned aerial vehicle has been extremely compelling. Aircraft let us travel quickly, get a birds-eye view of things and move freely unabated by ground-borne obstruction. However, one of the biggest obstacles that they face is us. When it comes to flight, lighter is better, but since they need to accommodate a human being comfortably, airplanes have to be built larger and heavier, than they would otherwise have to be. This means more complexity, higher cost and less range, as carrying more weight requires burning more fuel.Drones solve all these issues. Being unmanned these airborne vehicles can be made lighter, smaller and much cheaper, as life support systems are not needed. Instead, these vehicles are focused on being as light, manoeuvrable and long-range as possible. Without the risk of a human casualty, drones can also take on more dangerous tasks than manned vehicles. It's no wonder then that the development of drones has been deeply rooted in the military.Unmanned aerial vehicles initially appeared in the 1930s. Early drone developments included balloons designed to time-release bombs over enemy lines, and unpiloted planes with explosives on board, intended to crash after a certain number of engine revolutions. The advent of radio technology brought better navigation. One of the first radio-controlled (RC) drones was used during World War II to train anti-aircraft gunners how to shoot down realistically-moving aerial targets. From then on, the pace of drone progression quickened and they were used increasingly in actual combat scenarios. Drones have been used since the 1970s in major conflicts across the world.Micro revolutionWhile drones have been used in a military context for a considerable time, it is only in this decade that they have become affordable enough to enter the consumer market. Personal drones have been made possible by innovations in micro electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technology, driven by the requirements of the smartphone market.Aerial navigation requires sophisticated sensors to monitor physical orientation, as well as acceleration along three different axes. In the past, this involved using relatively large and expensive inertial measurement units (IMUs) which consist of accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers. These macro-sized sensing units were large, heavy and extremely expensive, limiting them to professional aerospace, naval and defence applications.Using the same techniques that are applied to semiconductor manufacturing, MEMS technology shrunk accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers, allowing them to be much smaller, cheaper and even more reliable. Today a 9-axis sensor like the Bosch BNO055 that measures compass orientation, physical orientation and acceleration in three axes can be the size of a tiny chip, smaller than a finger nail. The tremendous size and weight reduction of MEMS-based IMUs has allowed them to drive today's drones, and their low price has meant that drones can be affordable to the average consumer or small business.With drones starting to get into the hands of everyday consumers and businesses, we have now come up with ever greater and more creative uses for them. Today, drones are used in everything from logistics to rescue operations.For the logistics industries, drones have been used for delivering packages quickly and efficiently. Their ability to fly lets them beat traffic and navigate over ground-based obstacles. Not only can drones do deliveries faster and more efficiently than humans, but they can also deliver to areas or locations that humans currently cannot. Do you live on the 15th floor of an apartment building? A drone can deliver a package directly to your balcony. If you decide to have an impromptu picnic at the park, a drone could deliver pizza directly to your smartphone's GPS location.The ability of drones to do quick and accurate 3D mapping of large areas has transformed surveying, and offers the potential to change other industries like tourism as well. A remotely controlled drone with high precision GPS can take detailed photos of large areas in hours or even minutes. These high resolution photographs can then be pieced together with photogrammetric software to build incredibly precise 3D maps of terrain. Areas which once took a team of ground-based surveyors weeks to survey can now be dealt with in days, thanks to drones.Drones are also transforming disaster recovery, and search and rescue operations. In the aftermath of a natural disaster, key infrastructure such as roads and electricity can be seriously damaged, making it difficult for ground-based relief to arrive quickly and work efficiently. In these situations, drones can perform aerial surveillance of an area to discover the location and status of disaster or search for injured people. Drones can even be used as first responders, to deliver critical items such as food or medicine to victims in remote areas.Drone technologyAs miniaturised, wirelessly controlled aerial vehicles, drones are a technological tour-de-force. They contain some of the latest navigational, computational and aeronautical technologies we have today. A drone consists of a chassis, rotors, motors, electronic speed controllers, a battery and a flight controller. While the mechanical aspects such as its rotors, chassis style, and motors determine its flight characteristics and carrying capacity, it is the constituent electronic systems that are on board which distinguish modern drones from yesterday's RC planes and helicopters.Each rotor and corresponding motor has an electronic speed controller (ESC) which controls the speed of the motor. The ESC is a mixed signal circuit which delivers high resolution 3 phase AC power to drive a brushless motor based on a control signal. Connected to a motor and the battery, ESCs are sized according to the amount of current they can drive.Besides the ESC, the flight controller is the other essential electronic system on board a drone. Whereas RC airplanes and helicopters give operators direct control over motor speed, modern drones have multiple rotors, and the complexity of rotor speed coordination means an automated system is required. The flight controller uses an array of sensors, such as GPS, gyroscope, accelerometer, compass and barometers, to stabilise and navigate the drone by adjusting the speed of the rotors.Modern flight controllers can range from providing simple stability control to full-on autonomous navigation with obstacle avoidance using machine vision - possible with advanced platforms like Intel's Aero compute board.Getting started with dronesWhile there is a certain joy in building your own drone from scratch, it takes a great deal of time, effort and perseverance. Thankfully, these days there are pre-built unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platforms available, which allow you to choose exactly how deep you want to dive in. Perhaps the most complete, yet flexible UAV platform so far is Intel's Aero series. This platform can come either as a flight controller compute board, or a ready-to-fly drone development platform.In the ready-to-fly option, Intel's Aero drone is a fully assembled quad-copter running Linux on a multi-core Atom SoC processor. It has flight controller software pre-installed - allowing users to fly the drone out of the box without any programming being needed. The ready-to-fly Aero platform allows users to focus on developing sophisticated drone applications immediately, rather than wasting time struggling with the mechanics of flight control.The Aero drone also has multiple cameras, including a front-facing Intel RealSense R200 camera. The R200 is a depth-sensing machine vision camera system including dual conventional cameras as well as an infrared camera and infrared laser projector. The stereo vision and infrared components allow for 3D imaging and depth sensing capabilities. These can be used for collision avoidance, surveying, 3D mapping, surveillance applications and more. Besides selling as a complete, ready-to-fly drone, the Aero platform is also available as a compute board with optional enclosure and RealSense Camera, allowing the compute and machine vision capabilities to be integrated onto other multi-copter drone chassis.Whereas they were once simply hobbyist's toys, drones today have penetrated numerous markets and are aiming for many more. At the same time, developing drone applications has never been easier. For those trying to go straight into advanced drone application development, Intel's Aero platform offers a ready-to-fly solution, and for those wanting to get down and dirty, integrated components from suppliers like Infineon and Cypress can significantly cut development time and cost.(Editor's note: Mark Patrick is technical marketing manager at Mouser Electronics)Photo: Mouser

While education authorities in Taiwan and many other countries are promoting unwalled campuses, campus security is emerging as a major concern, and smart video security systems offered by Taiwan's AI startup Umbo Computer Vision can help address the issue, according to Shawn Guan, CEO of the firm.Guan said that in the past, video security systems were programmed with predefined rules that rely heavily on geometrics to detect motions or changes, and therefore they may work in performing simple tasks in generic environments but fail everywhere else.Guan stressed that his firm's smart video security systems are available with AI-based recognition function that can tell what actions are going on by judging continuous motions of a person or object, and the systems will issue warning signals to the back-end control center, in case of any suspicious actions such as crossing the wall.Besides detecting abnormal intrusion into campus, the systems can also detect the behavior of children to see if they are skipping classes, undergoing physical altercations, falling off or getting injured, Guan continued.Founded in 2014, Umbo has tapped into security control space with its AI-based image recognition technology, but the technology focuses more on analyzing human behavior to ward off potential danger factors, instead of conducting simple facial recognition and identity check.Umbo's smart video security systems are well received in Taiwan and foreign markets. In Taiwan, the Agency of Corrections under the Ministry of Justice has adopted the systems to judge whether prison inmates show offensive behavior when getting together, and some elementary schools in northern Taiwan have also utilized the systems to boost campus security. In addition, many of the top 500 US enterprises are among the company's customers, according to Guan.