BEVs (battery electric vehicles) and PHEVs (plug-in hybrid electric vehicles) show significant performances in MPG (miles per gallon of gasoline) equivalent and energy savings.Among new car models for 2018, a BEV has a maximum MPGe of 136 and minimum annual energy cost of US$500 in terms of fuel economy, followed by a PHEV with a maximum MPGe of 133 and minimum annual energy cost of US$600, Digitimes Research have found.Previous hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) were of series, parallel and series-parallel types of driving systems, with MPG mostly exceeding 47 and average annual energy cost of about US$700. However, HEVs' batteries are recharged by internal combustion engines, or replaced when electricity is depleted. And HEVs discharge quite high volumes of carbon dioxide.BEVs and PHEVs have been developed to solve such problems. Some automakers have launched range-extended electric vehicles (REEVs) and fuel cell EVs to increase total running distance at full storage or electricity, but such models are inferior to BEVs and PHEVs in energy savings.

GeoVision is a Taiwan-based surveillance solution developer in business for over 20 years. Although not as big as some of the international firms, the company is still one of the top-50 players worldwide. But growing competition in the traditional legacy surveillance sector prompted GeoVision to shift its development to artificial intelligence (AI) technologies several years ago, and has since attained high levels of competitiveness in the AI sector. The company's new edge computing type of AI surveillance products are giving GeoVision a good position in the AI surveillance market.Digitimes recently had an opportunity to talk to GeoVision's Max Yang, director of Sales of New Product Division. He talked about the surveillance market's current status and GeoVision's plans for the market.Q: What kind of company is GeoVision? What business segments does GeoVision mainly focus on?A: GeoVision has been operating in Taiwan for over 20 years, focusing primarily on developing image analysis technologies and the integration of surveillance software and hardware that cover segments ranging from back-end server systems to front-end cameras.Among the surveillance applications, our expertise is on the security field and facial recognition is a key technology that GeoVision has been developing for its latest products during the past couple of years and will be our promotion focus for 2018.As for our business model, GeoVision is a manufacturer and also a vendor of its own-brand surveillance products. But it has begun providing ODM services to support some of our regional brand clients since two years ago. We have established a new department for the ODM business, which is currently contributing about 20% of the company's revenues.Q: What is the surveillance market's current status?A: Currently, the surveillance market has two major sectors: the traditional legacy surveillance and digital artificial intelligence (AI) surveillance.The traditional legacy surveillance system is composed of conventional cameras and a back-end server. The back-end server retrieves video data from the cameras for storage and users are able to view the recorded footage via the server system. The sector is currently being dominated by China-based suppliers with the top players accounting for 50% of the sector's shipments worldwide.Although customers are able to obtain inexpensive solutions from these China-based suppliers, there are security concerns since most of their products use the same hardware configurations and software systems to cut down costs. And these suppliers usually do not bother to encrypt the video data or enforce security measures on the surveillance system's management platform, allowing hackers to easily gain control of their systems.With dwindling profitability from the traditional legacy surveillance sector, Taiwan and other international surveillance product firms have mostly turned to the newer-generation surveillance camera systems such as those integrated with AI support.The largest player of the digital AI surveillance sector is Germany-based Bosch, which has mainly been obtaining orders from international airports.Q: What is GeoVision's business strategy for the surveillance market?A: GeoVision will continue placing efforts onto its traditional legacy surveillance systems and is at the same time spending resources on the development of AIoT products that integrate AI into Internet of Things (IoT) surveillance devices, targeting market segments including smart retailing, smart factory, smart manufacturing and smart medical care.For the AIoT business, GeoVision is pushing direct partnerships with manufacturers and factories to provide services such as upgrading their existing systems to feature AI support or planning a comprehensive surveillance solution for their new facilities. The partnership will allow GeoVision to fully understand clients' demand and provide corresponding solutions to satisfy their needs.Q: Where are GeoVision's main markets? Any new markets that GeoVision will be targeting?A: North America is currently our largest market with 60% of our revenues generated from the region. At the beginning, GeoVision's business model in North America was to supply clients with customized surveillance software that could work with their existing low-resolution camera systems but provide more functionality. But as these clients started to see the needs to upgrade their systems to high-resolution digital camera solutions, we became their first choice for procuring surveillance products.North America will remain a key market for GeoVision in 2018 with Japan to also be a major target country for our AIoT solutions in 2018. We have also partnered with a local home security service provider in Taiwan to supply our AIoT products to the market.As for Southeast Asia, GeoVision does not have a branch office in the region and is mainly partnering with local distributors to sell its products. We are aware of the region's growing demand for IT applications over the past few years and will consider establishing an office there if we are able to identify any good opportunity or local partner that can help us quickly expand into the market.Q: What is GeoVision's competitiveness?A: With the traditional legacy surveillance sector mired in fierce price competition, AI technologies are the key to differentiate the digital AI surveillance system sector from the traditional legacy surveillance one. For GeoVision, the company's R&D focus is facial recognition technologies and applications.Compared to others, the special thing about our facial recognition technologies is that we have implemented the innovations onto the cameras instead of the back-end server. The concept of the edge computing surveillance system means our clients do not need to fully replace their existing systems in order to acquire AI surveillance functions for their facilities.Currently, there are three types of AI facial recognition surveillance systems available in the market. The first type is through support from cloud computing service providers such as Google, Amazon, Tencent and Alibaba. The surveillance system can perform the facial recognition functionality by sending video data to one of these players' cloud computing platforms for analysis via high-speed Internet. However, the downside of the process is it involves high costs for the service and Internet support. Another key issue is that some companies do not wish to send their surveillance data to outside companies due to security concerns and these problems have lmited demand for this type of serivce.The second type is the full surveillance solution with the back-end server system being the one handling the facial recognition task. But such a solution will require clients to replace the whole surveillance system and add up costs.The third one is the edge computing-type surveillance with the face recognition handled directly by the cameras, and this is the direction that GeoVision is currently devoted to. Our cameras feature application processors from Qualcomm and memory for processing facial recognition functionality and clients can easily view any information the cameras analyze and store.Our cameras are able to recognize 10 faces at once and are suitable for automated employee time recording and office building access control to help keep intruders out. The systems can also be adopted in retail stores where the cameras can detect the stores' MVPs or any specific person and create alerts to notify store clerks.Max Yang, director of Sales of New Product Division, GeoVisionPhoto: Company

Linde Electronics, a member of The Linde Group, is one of the major global manufacturers of bulk and electronic specialty gases used during the manufacturing of semiconductors, displays, solar panels, LEDs and other electronics products.Facing the severe challenges of advanced semiconductor process technology nodes in sub-micron grade of silicon chips manufacturing, the company established Linde Electronics research and development center (Linde ERDC) in 2016 to enhance its local capabilities and product portfolio to meet growing demands from industries. Linde ERDC, located at Taichung Harbor Related Industrial Park in Taiwan, is a two-floor building design with advanced gases analytic laboratories and a product development centre. This ERDC has been operating to provide analytic services of high-purity electronic gases in Asia Pacific regions and is also focusing on the development of new materials, packages and services. It has supported the launch of several joint development projects to test and make new materials in-house with the closed collaboration with customers and third-party suppliers for the purposes of reduced cost, process and development time.During a recent interview, Linde Electronics' head of Electronics Technology and Innovation, Carl Jackson, pointed out that the global leading-edge pure-play semiconductor foundries have been in a tight race to lead process technology development and are migrating from 10 to 5 to even 3 nanometers in the coming years. It is becoming more critical for them to improve their electronic performance by integrating other materials when processes push the limits of silicon physics, especially considering the joint development of ultra-purity materials. Meeting this challenge is a key driving force for Linde ERDC working in tight cooperation close to customers.Jackson observed that in the early 1990s period, some materials being supplied were in the of 99% purity range. Today, industries are requesting products of 7N grade, which means 99.99999% purity, with the possibility to move to even tighter product purity specifications in the next few years. For those ultra-high purity materials, it is very important for the customers such as for Taiwan first tier semiconductor and electronics manufacturers to request proper measurement of the materials when various chemical treatments purifies them through processes. This is why Linde ERDC plays an important role in advanced process development fields.Another obvious benefit of Linde ERDC has been largely used by local customers: testing speed of the labs. Most Asia clients prefer to send the sample to a local analysis laboratory in order to obtain results faster. This is one of the the reasons why Linde Electronics continues to invest in local capabilities in Asia Pacific.Linde Electronics' non-stop efforts to pursue material development excellence achieves the strengthening of corporate core competence successfully. These strategies also leverage the synergy to maximize customers' value and win the market. Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing service providers own the superior manufacturing capability and readily react instantly toward the rapidly changing market. Therefore, Linde ERDC partners with Taiwanese companies to form a competitive edge and to be successful in the market. Here is the Q&A with Carl Jackson.Q: Linde ERDC was opened at the end of 2016. What has happened since then?A: Well, the first thing to say is that overall Linde Electronics had a very positive year in 2017. We are continuing to invest significantly in this region both in our on-site business, but also in our electronics special gases capabilities, so the set-up of this facility looks to be well-timed to support this growth and is fully aligned with our "Local Partner, Global Expertise" strategy.From the ERDC perspective, we have been very busy with one of our main activities here, which is the "fingerprinting" of materials. This means essentially processing materials through all our analysis systems to enable us to see a complete profile of the material quality, often looking much deeper than the standard specification. With this information, we are better positioned, for example, to ensure that our sub-suppliers' raw material meets our demanding operational requirements or that we are able to quickly support our customers should they need to fix or improve a particular process.Another focus area that we continue to ramp is the development of new products, in collaboration with our customers. For a material supplier like Linde Electronics, the definition of a new product has a broad scope. We can be talking about a new molecule not conventionally used in IC manufacturing that is needed to enable a new process application. It could be an existing material that is required at a higher purity, it could be a new method or equipment to deliver materials to the customer process, or it could be a combination. We are working on examples of all of these new products here in Taiwan.Q: How is having a local R&D team helping to bring value to customers in this region?A: Our investment in this facility has been very well received by our customers, who have been very quick to see the additional service and support these physical capabilities can provide. However, enabling us to get the most value out of these capabilities is our local team, which is centered here and stretches out into China and Korea.Clearly we have put a lot of emphasis on being close to our customers, which is essential when trying to coordinate the type of complex development projects that we manage. Sometimes technology does help and we can work effectively as a virtual team; however, for most projects, we need to be here, we need to be local to really understand what the customer needs and when, and we need to deliver on our commitments.Working with our regional businesses has also benefited from our new capabilities here enabling the Improvement of supply chain reliability for certain existing products. We are working on several initiatives to help our regional business localize the production of electronic specialty gases or other value-added activities so that our customers have ready access to local supply of products rather than having to rely on the traditional long supply chains.Q: Following the success here in Taiwan, do you plan to add more R&D centers in other countries in Asia?A: Linde has a significant and long-established R&D presence already in China, for example, serving our related industry sectors such as Metals and Glass, Food and Additive Manufacturing. From an electronics perspective, we are well positioned in Taiwan to serve all customers in the east Asia region. It is possible in the future that we could expand our advanced analytical capabilities, however, for product development, you need a certain critical mass of highly specialized personnel, who operate most effectively when co-located so we will continue to build our development team here.Q: What main challenges do you see looking forward?A: Our customers' speed and scope of technological innovation is relentless. Keeping pace with this and ensuring we are working in the areas that bring most value will remain a challenge as no material supplier can effectively operate in all areas. As I mentioned earlier, we have been seeing more and more non-traditional materials on the customers' development planning roadmaps, which can present an analytical challenge for us. Also, these materials may be supplied as liquids or solids, so the delivery from the source to the tool also needs a significant amount of focus to bring to high-volume manufacturing readiness.That said, we have a lot of experience successfully serving this market and are further encouraged by our experience during our first full year of operation here in Taiwan. We feel very well positioned to be able to work with our customers to solve these challenges in a way that also supports our continued growth and investment in this region.Head of Linde T&I E, Carl JacksonInner view of Linde ERDCLinde ERDC

Global TDDI (touch and display driver integration) chip shipments are expected to hit the five million mark in 2018, Digitimes Research estimates.Novatek Microelectronics and Himax Technologies are set to join Synaptics and FocalTech Systems capable of volume producing their TDDI solutions for smartphone panels in 2018, according to Digitimes Research.On the demand side, the growing popularity of bezel-less smartphones is encouraging flat display panel makers to ramp up their production of profiled all-screen displays. With the all-screen design becoming a popular feature for smartphones, the TDDI chip market is expected to grow robustly in 2018.The 2018 market for TDDI chips will continue to be led by Synaptics, whose display driver IC lineup provides support for high panel resolutions such as Full HD (FHD), and LTPS (low-temperature poly-silicon) technology. Nevertheless, Synaptics with its relatively high prices compared to rivals will face more competition in the mainstream smartphone market segment, Digitimes Research believes.Smartphone vendors are looking to increasingly adopt LTPS LCD panels in their bezel-less models in 2018 which will boost Synaptics' shipments during the year. In 2017, Synaptics' shipments were affected negatively by smartphone vendors' preference for AMOLED panels, as well as less-optimistic high-end smartphone shipments.FocalTech has gradually expanded its presence in the mainstream smartphone segment with its chips supporting a-Si TFT LCD HD display resolutions, Digitimes Research has observed. FocalTech's TDDI chips still have a cost advantage over its new competitors in the mainstream segment, and the company is expected to enjoy significant shipment growth in 2018.

The government of India launched an ambitious plan to transition to an all-electric vehicular (EV) fleet by 2030. This plan has revved up the Indian automotive industry, in line with the global trends, marking the end of internal combustion engines (ICE). It is evident from the recently concluded India Auto Expo, where most leading domestic and international automakers displayed electric vehicles - bus, cars, motorcycles, and scooters - that the transition to EV has taken off in India.The driving forces for EV in IndiaReduce ever-increasing fuel billIndia is the world's third largest oil importer; oil import bill is set to touch US$88 billion by 2017-18 increasing by 25% from US$70 billion in 2016-17 out of which 65-70% is used for transportation. By 2030, India oil import bill is pegged to reach US$300 billion causing a major concern for the India government. Accelerated adoption of electric vehicles could save US$60 billion in diesel and petrol costs while cutting down as much as one gigaton (GT) of carbon emissions for India by 2030.Pollution control Electric vehicles have zero emission. Through EV adoption, India could save 64% of energy demand for road transport and 37% or 1GT of carbon emissions by 2030.Improvements in EV technologyRecent trends in the automobile industry indicate that the world is overtaken by the EV wave to replace ICE-vehicles. EV technology has undergone tremendous improvement over the years including: increase in range and battery storage capacity; better cost efficiencys; and shorter charge time. The cost of battery power has fallen from around US$1,000 per kWh in 2010 to around US$227 in 2016, and is expected to drop below US$200 per kWh by 2020.India government initiativesFaster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles in India, or FAME, is aimed at promoting the use of EVs in multimodal public transport to help lower pollution levels in urban areas. In order to accelerate the adoption of EVs, the government of India is offering incentives to cities with population of more than one million. Under FAME initiative, the central government is looking to offer incentives for the procurement of electric cars, city buses, as well as three-wheelers. The government is offering grants of US$16.2 million (INR105 Cr) to every selected city. Additional incentives of US$2.3 million will also be provided to each city for the construction of EV charging infrastructure. The criteria for short listing dictate that each city should have a population above one million, as per 2011 census. The incentives will be used only to buy electric buses, three-wheelers, and passenger cars running on new-generation batteries with traces of lead like lithium polymer, lithium iron phosphate, nickel metal hydride and zinc air, among others.Components and outlay under FAME schemeComponent under FAMEFY2015-16 INRm (US$m)FY2016-17INRm (US$m)Technology platorm700 (10.5)1,200 (18)Demand incentives1,550 (23.25)3,400 (51)Charging infrastructure100 (1.5)200 (3)Pilot projects200 (3)500 (7.5)IEC/operations50 (0.75)50 (0.75)Total2,600 (39)5350 (80.25)Source: FAMEIndia unveiled the 'National Electric Mobility Mission Plan (NEMMP) 2020' in 2013 to address the issue of national energy security, vehicular pollution and growth of domestic manufacturing capabilities. It aims to achieve national fuel security by promoting hybrid and electric vehicles in the country. There is an ambitious target to achieve 6-7 million sales of hybrid and electric vehicles year on year from 2020 onwards. NEMMP 2020 envisions the deployment of 5-7 million electric vehicles in the country by 2020; and 400,000 passenger battery electric cars (BEVs) saving 4 million tonnes of CO2 with a required investment of US$3 billion. With the support from the government, the cumulative sale is expected to reach 15-16 million by 2020One of the main detriments for EV adoption is the expensive battery cost. In order to address this issue the government of India announced incentives for battery makers to set up more manufacturing units in India. The government is in talks with resource-rich countries to ensure supplies of raw materials such as lithium.Opportunity for Taiwan India's EV wave provides Taiwan component manufacturers a huge opportunity given Taiwan's leadership in electronics, and the matured and complete auto components manufacturing ecosystem. Industry leaders were thrilled to learn that pioneering EV technology including: Tesla's original technology and the successful Gogoro e-scooter were from Taiwan. While the Indian government - at both the central and state levels - is framing its own EV policies, they are looking up to Taiwan for its best practices. This symbiotic development in India's EV future opens up expansive collaborative opportunities between India and Taiwan:*Indian automakers and components manufacturers/suppliers are all in their strategic planning stage for EV which makes it an ideal time for collaboration and exploring business opportunities*Indian automakers and components manufacturers are looking for the basic EV components, namely: electric motor, controller, battery pack, charger, DC/DC converter, contactors.*For Taiwan or any foreign component suppliers it is key to manufacture in India and have a JV/partnership with credible Indian entity. A strict anti-dumping policy and increased imports duties on auto components has been put in place in order to promote local manufacturing.*For EV component manufacturers, it is critical that they have: Appetite to make in India; JV/partnership with Indian entity; robust R&D and clear roadmap in each of their manufactured product/field; strong service support/after sales support; and open for joint development(JDM) projects.*Workshop/roadshow at automakers factory showcasing EV components solution and products and interaction with engineers. Workshop is welcomed by most automakers.*Collaboration with thinktank and government departments, particularly departments of transport and non renewable energy, to help define India EV policies.(Note: Jonathan Lalremruata is a consultant for India Market Entry. Jonathan is an alumnus of Taiwan's National Tsing Hua University and ITRI. He has over a decade of global experience in the ICT industry and specializes in India-Taiwan industrial collaboration. He can be reached at jonathan.lalremruata@gmail.com)

The global semiconductor industry posted its highest-ever annual sales in 2017. With major technology players all wanting a slice of the Asia Pacific market, the strategies and operations of Avnet, a leading global technology distributor and solutions provider, play a crucial role in ensuring the company's success.In an exclusive interview, Frederick Fu, president of Avnet Asia Pacific, shares his views on the trends and changes of the global electronics industry in 2018 as well as Avnet's key strategies in the region.Smart applications built on IoT and cloud computing are the global trends for 2018On the outlook of the global electronics industry in 2018, Fu thinks the industry is trending toward "smartization" - including IoT and cloud computing applications that are already prevalent in the market. Businesses are able to provide better service models by leveraging smart applications for data collection and analysis.Fu further explains that IoT is not new in the industry. Once low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) technologies become widely available, we can expect to see a more aggressive adoption of IoT. Take smart buildings for example. It used to require electrical wiring for end devices in a building to be able to engage in communication. Now this is possible simply by putting batteries and sensors in end devices. The batteries can last up to five years without the need for replacement. Wiring installation is also not necessary so this saves a great deal of time and money in planning and management.In addition, some recent hot topics including advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), autonomous cars, and artificial intelligence (AI) also have critical influence on the electronics industry. For instance, semiconductor components in an automobile previously accounted for only US$20 to US$30 of the total cost, but now they run up to US$100. With cars becoming increasingly connected, electronics components may account for more than half the cost of an automobile in the future. Tapping the growing opportunity in IoT demand, in the case of ADAS for instance, Avnet has both hardware and software solutions for ADAS that has been implemented in China.The role of distributors is also undergoing changes along with the shifts in the electronics industry. Distributors used to be seen as the middlemen buying and reselling products but now their role goes beyond that. Avnet today serves as the bridge between suppliers and businesses that actively look to provide IoT products and solutions. This has become part of Avnet's business strategies, where its ecosystem connects the different parties with the latest technology– ranging from system integrators, service providers, device manufacturers, to cloud platform providers, and components suppliers – to provide an integrated approach to support and drive innovation and IoT initiatives for its customers.Eyeing Taiwan's advantages, Avnet establishes a wireless charging labAccording to Fu, Taiwan's electronics industry is aligned with global developments, including the smart trend arising from IoT and cloud computing advancements. Despite declining performance in the smartphone and tablet markets, there are still growth opportunities in Taiwan. In terms of IoT developments, the Taiwan industry has built up a solid foundation in network gateways and has been supporting many technology giants. The achievements in these two segments complement each other. Furthermore, Taiwan-based IC designers are gearing developments toward RF, mixed signal and MCU chips, also in consonance with the popular trend. They additionally have geographical advantages with Taiwan's close proximity to China as well as robust foundry technology. As one of the company's biggest market in this region, Avnet is expanding its business in Taiwan, including Taichung and Kaohsiung, to increase customers based in central and southern Taiwan. Its efforts are generating results with a growing number of customers from that region, focusing on factory automation and measuring instruments. Fu indicated Taiwan is an important market for Avnet and Avnet will stay committed to the Taiwan market. It has recently set up the first spec 1.2.4 wireless charging laboratory to support the growing demand for wireless charging and help customers accelerate the process of certification. Equipped with WPC approved test equipment nok9 CATS I and CATS II, Avnet has also formed a partnership with a test lab to ensure stringent test criteria are adhered to. Avnet effectively shortens the certification process and lead time leading to faster product launches.Expanding business scope, a distributor does more than distributingWith regards to Avnet's short-term market strategies, Fu pointed out that Avnet will continue to provide design and supply chain capabilities, as well as product development to market. The maker and startup markets are also among Avnet's focus segments. Avnet has been undertaking a series of acquisitions and expansions since 2016 to accommodate the small-quantity large-variety characteristic of business, which is also spurring a rapidly growing number of makers and startups."Small and medium enterprises are not afraid to reinvent the wheel to bring in a new wave of innovation and trends. They have great potential for rapid growth in the future or stand a chance of being acquired by big companies. Avnet has invested resources in building a connected ecosystem to help startups become the next unicorn," said Fu.IoT as well nurturing startups remain the core of Avnet's focus in the coming year. Avnet will continue to invest in the IoT space to continuously enhance our IoT solutions to the market. As a key differentiator from other distributors, the company also helps to bridge the gap between the startups and market to guide them from idea to production to market.Frederick Fu, president of Avnet Asia PacificA chronicle of Avnet's recent business expansions

Manufacturers today are looking to transform traditional production systems as they struggle to addresses challenges associated with shortening product life cycles, rising labor costs and wide-ranging consumer demands. This has given rise to Industry 4.0, smart factory and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) developments, which are also propelling growing applications of machine vision technologies.Alex Liang, product manager, IoT Solutions and Technology Group, ADLINK, thinks three critical trends will lead future developments of machine vision. With these trends come both new opportunities and challenges for machine vision.First of all, with widespread applications of big data analytics, businesses demand higher data processing efficiency and are growingly making use of distributed computing, cloud computing, fog computing or edge computing. This is bringing changes to where and how machine vision is used. Machine vision systems have to make a breakthrough from the traditional concept of gauge, inspection, guide and identification (GIGI) to include the ability to perform computation and analysis and work in conjunction with other devices.Furthermore, maturing IoT technologies have enabled a variety of devices to become connected. Communication across different devices via a network has become necessary. Therefore, communication solutions including OPC unified architecture (OPC-UA), Robot Operating System 2.0 (ROS 2), Data Distribution Service (DDS) and Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) are increasingly important and will influence machine vision developments.In response to shorter product life cycles, manufacturers endeavor to accelerate production to accommodate rapid market changes so they are keen to adopt easy and ready-to-use solutions to help them shorten the learning curve and speed up the introduction process. This is leading the development of machine vision software to gear toward simple, intuitive and user-friendly design.Machine vision infused with innovations becomes instrumental to smart manufacturingAccording to Liang, in the foreseeable future, machine vision will not only be used to perform quality inspection but it should also play an active role to allow robots to have human-like vision so that they can easily carry out loading, picking, gripping and packing operations with no need for an intricate guiding process. To achieve such purposes, machine vision systems have to incorporate the ability to collect, analyze and process large amounts of data in real time while supporting close communication with other devices. Therefore, how machine vision can keep up with advancing technologies such as edge computing, OPC-UA, ROS 2 and vision guided robotics (VGR) to fully support smart manufacturing requirements on high efficiency, high precision and low latency has become the next topic and challenge.Take edge computing for example. The traditional machine vision design has separate camera modules and processing units (industrial PC). However, the rapid growth of data volume imposes increasingly challenging requirements on computational power so now the camera module has to turn into an edge-located computing node that can pre-process data and offload some of the burden from the processing unit.OPC-UA, a machine-to-machine communication protocol for industrial automation, enables heterogeneous platforms or devices in a smart factory to communicate and exchange data. In the past, machine vision systems engage in communication with PLC, I/O or motion control equipment through various specific protocols or customized functions, making integration very difficult. The availability of OPC-UA will be able to resolve such problems.The combination of ROS 2 and VGR equips robots or automated guided vehicles (AGV) with machine vision to enhance their efficiency and ability to work in synchronization. ROS is an open-source robotics operating system. The first generation ROS 1 is based on the TCP/IP protocol while the later generation ROS 2 is built on the UDP+DDS architecture and provides more powerful support for real-time data sharing between devices with robust security. Major robot manufacturers worldwide have all implemented support for ROS 2 using common SLAM, Navigation, Perception and Manipulation resources and algorithms. This not only enables problem-free communication across robotic systems but also builds a broad development platform for machine vision. Factories in the future will no longer have independent devices or work stations but instead can connect robotic arms, AGV and other machinery of different brands to realize smart manufacturing for wide-ranging production needs through the new VGR concept.In addition to the above trends, the development of deep learning should also be considered when we try to figure out where machine vision technologies and applications are headed, commented Liang. Deep learning is not a new technology. It basically imitates the workings of the human brain to carry out recognition, decision-making and prediction through training using a neural network paradigm. Execution of deep learning tasks used to rely on high-performance CPUs but the costs ran high and the processing took a long time. Advancements in GPU technologies in recent years have allowed GPUs to process graphics with a much higher efficiency than CPUs. Deep learning leveraging the GPU's processing power has therefore become a technology with a high cost-performance value. The marriage between deep learning and machine vision can be expected to create far-reaching synergy in the future.Looking ahead to 2018, ADLINK hopes to provide total solutions designed to enable quick introduction and optimal values for Industry 4.0, smart factory and IIoT applications. For this purpose, ADLINK will highlight edge computing, ROS 2 and deep learning as its focus R&D areas. The integration of these innovative technologies will complement the company's machine vision product portfolio, including smart cameras and image processing systems.For more information, please visit ADLINKMachine vision infused with innovations becomes instrumental to smart manufacturing

Worldwide spending on cognitive and artificial intelligence (AI) systems will reach US$19.1 billion in 2018, an increase of 54.2% over the amount spent in 2017, according to IDC. With industries investing aggressively in projects that utilize cognitive/AI software capabilities, IDC forecasts cognitive and AI spending will grow to US$52.2 billion in 2021 and achieve a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 46.2% over the 2016-2021 forecast period."Interest and awareness of AI is at a fever pitch. Every industry and every organization should be evaluating AI to see how it will affect their business processes and go-to-market efficiencies," said David Schubmehl, research director, Cognitive/Artificial Intelligence Systems at IDC. "IDC has estimated that by 2019, 40% of digital transformation initiatives will use AI services and by 2021, 75% of enterprise applications will use AI. From predictions, recommendations, and advice to automated customer service agents and intelligent process automation, AI is changing the face of how we interact with computer systems."Retail will overtake banking in 2018 to become the industry leader in terms of cognitive/AI spending. Retail firms will invest US$3.4 billion this year on a range of AI use cases, including automated customer service agents, expert shopping advisors and product recommendations, and merchandising for omni channel operations. Much of the US$3.3 billion spent by the banking industry will go toward automated threat intelligence and prevention systems, fraud analysis and investigation, and program advisors and recommendation systems. Discrete manufacturing will be the third largest industry for AI spending with US$2 billion going toward a range of use cases including automated preventative maintenance and quality management investigation and recommendation systems. The fourth largest industry, healthcare providers, will allocate most of its US$1.7 billion investment to diagnosis and treatment systems."Enterprise digital transformation strategies are increasingly including multiple cognitive/artificial intelligence use cases," said Marianne Daquila, research manager, Customer Insights and Analysis at IDC. "Business transformation is occurring across all industries as successful companies embrace the array and potential impact of these solutions. Automated customer service agents, increased public safety, preventative maintenance, reduction of fraud, and improved healthcare diagnosis are just the tip of the iceberg driving spend today. With double-digit on-year spending growth forecast, IDC expects to see an increase in general use cases, as well as a refinement of industry-specific use cases."The cognitive/AI use cases that will see the largest spending totals in 2018 are: automated customer service agents (US$2.4 billion) with significant investments from the retail and telecommunications industries; automated threat intelligence and prevention systems (US$1.5 billion) with the banking, utilities, and telecommunications industries as the leading industries; and sales process recommendation and automation (US$1.45 billion) spending led by the retail and media industries. Three other use cases will be close behind in terms of global spending in 2018: automated preventive maintenance; diagnosis and treatment systems; and fraud analysis and investigation. The use cases that will see the fastest spending growth over the 2016-2021 forecast period are: public safety and emergency response (75.4% CAGR), pharmaceutical research and discovery (70.5% CAGR), and expert shopping advisors and product recommendations (67.3% CAGR).A little more than half of all cognitive/AI spending throughout the forecast will go toward cognitive software. The largest software category is cognitive applications, which includes cognitively-enabled process and industry applications that automatically learn, discover, and make recommendations or predictions. The other software category is cognitive platforms, which facilitate the development of intelligent, advisory, and cognitively enabled applications. Industries will also invest in IT services to help with the development and implementation of their cognitive/AI systems and business services such as consulting and horizontal business process outsourcing related to these systems. The smallest category of technology spending will be the hardware (servers and storage) needed to support the systems.On a geographic basis, the US will deliver more than three quarters of all spending on cognitive/AI systems in 2018, led by the retail and banking industries. Western Europe will be the second largest region in 2018, led by retail, discrete manufacturing and banking. The strongest spending growth over the five-year forecast will be in Japan (73.5% CAGR) and Asia Pacific (excluding Japan and China) (72.9% CAGR). China will also experience strong spending growth throughout the forecast (68.2% CAGR).

Amid speculations on reasons behind the recent speedy regulatory approval of Foxconn Industrial Internet's (FII) initial public offering (IPO) in China, it remains unclear to outsiders what role FII wil play in the Foxconn Group's industrial IoT (IIoT) platform.In a short statement issued earlier, Foxcoon simply indicated that the FII's IPO move is mainly designed to help accelerate its transformation into an IIoT enterprise group driven by big data, AI (artificial intelligence) and robot applications. Nevertheless, what business operations FII will undertake after going public remains quite blurry.Public information shows that FII now directly and indirectly holds stakes in as many as 60 subsidiaries of Foxconn, including Henan Yuzhan Precision Technology, Zengzhou Futaihua Precision Electronics, and ShanXi Yuding Precision Technology, mostly engaged in high-precision metal components and high precision, high molecular polymer components. In addition, it has also incorporated some business operations originally associated with network communications and datacenters. Accordingly, some observers think FII will remain a manufacturing-centric unit of Foxconn.Political maneuver?But if FII is simply a manufacturing entity, it seems unreasonable for China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) to issue a green light to FII's IPO in only 36 days after the application was filed, as traditional manufacturing industries are no longer targeted by China government for further development. Apparently, FII must have zeroed in on industrial and market segments that China is eager to develop with policy support.The quick green light could be interpreted as a political maneuver by China to win over Taiwan businesses, but it remains uncertain whether China would also quickly approve other Taiwan applicants' IPO bids. And of course, the big scale of FII's operations may have been a favorable factor.Anothe likely factor is that FII's direction is in line with China's policies set to steer the nation's industrial development, and China sees FII's IPO as a part of its grand move to tightly integrate IIoT, big data, AI and real economy of the country.But how to keep weaving a profitable business model appealing to investors by leveraging policy advantages will be a pressing task for FII after going public.In realizing the development of IIoT applications in the absence of successful business models for the moment, how the Foxcoon Group will do to integrate its existing internal and external resources or further enhance its businesses through acquisitions will be a big challenge for Foxconn.

Avalue Technology is one of Taiwan's veteran industrial PC (IPC) players, having been in the sector since 2000. Although it is not as big as some of the first-tier players, Avalue still has managed to stay competitive in the market leveraging its advantages in healthcare, retail and gambling machine product lines.To expand its presence, the company has been pushing into new businesses such as cloud computing solutions and development of ARM-based products. It has seen growing orders from these sectors. Digitimes recently sat down with Avalue's director of Intelligent Solution and System Jason Liu to talk about the IPC market and the company's business.Q: How is the IPC industry? What is Avalue's current status?A: Overall demand for IPCs is still growing steadily and most applications see increasing shipments.Most of our IPC products are based on the x86 platform with Intel's processors, while those with AMD's solutions are seeing a lot less demand than a few years ago. However, since two years ago, we have seen increasing issues with Intel's processors. One of the problems is that Intel has been constantly changing its CPU roadmap and has even removed many of its mobile CPUs that were originally meant to compete against ARM-based processors. Meanwhile, Intel is also having difficulties with its new CPUs, causing many IPC players to delay the launches of new products.Because of this, we have seen clients becoming less eager about upgrading their systems to the latest hardware specifications and the reluctance has become quite common in the IPC industry, undermining the business of many of its players.Meanwhile, demand for ARM-based solutions combined with Android or Linux operating system has been picking up rather fast to become a new business opportunity for us during the past few years.However, such a product line requires long-term investments in the software design and development. For Avalue, which had been an Wintel-oriented IPC players for a very long time, it was difficult at the beginning when we tried to transform our team to start focusing on writing codes for ARM-based processors, but it was a necessary step to take in order to obtain these types of orders.Although ARM-based solutions require time for development, its business opportunity is enormous. As most Taiwan-based IPC players are not familiar with developing ARM-based solutions, crossing into the related development could be challenging, but it also means that the market still has strong potential for growth.We have already been developing the ARM-based product line for over three years and are currently in talks with clients for several projects including voting machines.Q: What is Avalue's advantages over competitors?A: Recently, we have seen first-tier IPC makers launching pricing campaigns to compete for large-volume projects for general IPC applications such as point of sales (POS) and lottery machines, making these orders not as profitable as they used to be.To minimize the impact, Avalue has been shifting its business focus to product lines that it has advantages in such as medical, retail and gambling machines. We expect these product lines to boost our overall revenues by around 15% on year in 2018.In addition, we will also begin shipping in 2018 some large-volume general IPC orders that we obtained in 2017. There orders include lottery machines, fitness equipment and voting machines.Q: Is Avalue pushing any new business?A: For new businesses, Avalue is currently cooperating with Microsoft to push cloud computing-related solutions for smart retail and smart city applications. The special thing about the cloud computing solution business is that instead of the traditional method of selling only the gateway, we are offering full solutions covering front-end sensors, middle-end devices to back-end cloud computing server systems.We have assigned a special team to handle the development of the cloud computing server systems as well as firmware design for the end devices. Avalue is also working with Taiwan-based system integrators to help transform their standalone products such as sensors or devices, into total solutions. Since these system integrators' clients are mainly based in Taiwan, promoting their newly formed solutions to overseas markets including Southeast Asia, Europe, North America and Japan, will be a key business direction for us in 2018.Q: Geographically, what markets are Avalue focusing on?A: Southeast Asia is a new market for us. Compared to North America and Europe, which have been major revenue contributors to us for many years, our sales from Southeast Asia are currently still small, but the region is developing rather quickly in terms of infrastructure, making it a market full of business potential.We have also seen several Japan- and Korea-based IPC players moving their production lines to Southeast Asian countries to push industrial automation-related businesses. With these countries expected to be aggressively working on expanding their infrastructures, the facilities these Japan- and Korea-based players have invested in are expected to be able to obtain strong orders catering to these infrastructure projects.In China, our plan for 2018 is to continue focusing on products for medical care and industrial control applications. We currently still have weak presence in the market and the key goal is to expand our reach to more clients in China.Jason Liu, director of Intelligent Solution and System, AvaluePhoto: Company