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Taiwan Tech AI Research Center to provide readily-accessible AI systems for industry upgrade through collaboration projects

Sandy Du, DIGITIMES, Taipei 0

There is no doubt that artificial intelligence (AI) plays a key role in smart systems. Whether it's product inspection on a manufacturing line, route planning in a retail shop, or setting prices for rare items in a mobile game, complex algorithms are always pulling the strings behind the scenes. Consequently, the architecture of AI systems should be tightly intertwined with industrial applications to ensure that these are truly customized to the needs of enterprises. However, the expertise involved in developing AI can oftentimes place a heavy burden on companies. To resolve this problem, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (Taiwan Tech) recently founded its very own AI Research Center.

Kai-Lung Hua, dean of the Office of Industry-Academia Collaboration and director of the AI Research Center at Taiwan Tech, says that the center exists both to cultivate professional AI talents and to help facilitate smart transformation in Taiwan by helping companies deploy smart systems through collaboration projects.

Prior to the founding of the AI Research Center, Hua had already participated in the development of AI systems at various companies as a member of Taiwan Tech's Research Center for Information Technology Innovation (CITI). He would later join Taiwan Tech's Global Research and Industry Alliance (TAItech GLORIA) in 2018 and start a series of collaboration projects with industry partners. Students started to use AI tools provided by Intel to create solutions according to the needs of enterprises, providing a reality-based training environment to cultivate top-notch AI experts. The founding premise of the AI Research Center team is to create a win-win situation for both industry and academia by building an advanced technological foundation for enterprises through industry-academia cooperation. Hua points out that the early stages of AI development tend to demand overwhelming amounts of resources that make the endeavor too risky for enterprises. Therefore, the best way for enterprises to achieve such transformation is to team up with academic institutions to keep abreast of the latest technological developments.

Since schools are educational institutions which chief purpose is to train talents, this type of cooperation is easily justified. Moreover, Taiwan Tech is a technical education institution that specifically focuses on providing the industry with talent resources, so projects that prepare students for the workforce upon graduation are highly desirable. Drawing from this idea, Taiwan Tech decided to work alongside various enterprises on long-term projects wherein students pursuing an Industrial Master's Program can conduct technology R&D during their time at school. In addition to receiving a Master's degree, they are further provided with a guaranteed two-year employment contract to continue their research work in the same company after graduation.

Hua explains that the benefit of a model like this is that it allows enterprises to allocate R&D resources more effectively for technologies that take varying amounts of research time while providing professional talents in the corresponding field to help them gain market competitiveness in the future. For students, this model ensures that what they learn at school is relevant to the skills they will need to succeed in the workplace. Since the R&D projects that they conduct in school will become a part of their job, they will be able to get acclimated to the workplace immediately. At the same time, the school benefits by becoming more in touch with industry trends through the collaboration process, helping with future curriculum planning for students.

As for collaboration preferences, Hua explains that the AI Research Center will retain CITI's focus on the manufacturing and video game industries but also start working with financial institutions in 2021. In the field of smart manufacturing, the team has assisted major electronics manufacturers in Taiwan with building a diagnostic system for production line equipment. By deploying sensor networks on-site at the production lines to detect and record the operation status, big data analysis can be used to issue warnings at the early stages of abnormalities to remind managers to schedule maintenance.

For the gaming industry, the team is optimizing game development by using big data to analyze play time and player feedback to adjust relevant systems and rare item prices, thereby increasing stickiness. As for the financial industry, Taiwan Tech has already begun researching AI-based risk control mechanisms used by financial institutions in recent years.

Overall, Hua says that Taiwan Tech has always been a pioneer of technical and vocational education and training in Taiwan, constantly engaged in extensive collaboration with enterprises. However, participation in the Global Research and Industry Alliance (GLORIA) elevated the possibilities and benefits of such collaboration to a whole new level. This year, GLORIA also worked with the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) to initiate inter-school collaboration, integrating resources across different educational institutions and creating synergistic benefits that would not have been possible otherwise. These benefits can also be extended to the partner enterprises of educational institutions to maximize R&D achievements. Hua mentions that despite being a technical education institution, Taiwan Tech still doesn't always see eye to eye with enterprises on both the ideological and practical level, and that this disagreement often hampers further cooperation. This is where GLORIA can step in as a professional intermediary to help schools and enterprises clarify their respective needs and obligations so that cooperation can be carried out smoothly. Therefore, he believes that GLORIA has a positive influence when it comes to promoting the technologies developed by educational institutions' R&D teams. With GLORIA's resources, educational institutions can make more effective use of their R&D resources to become the strongest contributor to Taiwan's industrial upgrading process.

Dr. Kai-Lung Hua, the Dean of the Office of Industry-Academia Collaboration and the Director of the AI Research Center at Taiwan Tech.

Kai-Lung Hua, dean of the Office of Industry-Academia Collaboration and director of the AI Research Center at Taiwan Tech.
Photo: DIGITIMES