Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), the world’s No. 6 PC brand, yesterday announced a strategic alliance for motion-control systems with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院), hoping to attract more participation from the industrial sector.
A motion-control system is a detecting solution, such as a 3D camera, that can relay the gestures or movements of a person to control virtual images on a screen.
Asustek will work with the state-funded institute to build the alliance into an avenue for exchanges among application developers in the medical, education and gaming fields.
“Motion control is a simple, convenient and user-friendly interface. Through this alliance, we hope to establish an industry standard and share resources and technologies,” Asustek vice chairman Jonathan Tsang (曾鏘聲) said at the launch of the alliance.
In January, at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Asustek teamed up with Israel-based PrimeSense, whose chips form the backbone of Microsoft Corp’s Kinect game console motion-control system, to introduce its PC-exclusive WAVI Xtion system.
In February, the company also released the software development kit Xtion Pro so developers could build applications that used the sensor technology.
“We plan to sell 100,000 WAVI Xtion units in the first wave beginning at the end of October, with most of them sold through retail channels with the rest for developers,” said Kent Chien (簡孝堅), general manager of the multimedia business unit at Asustek.
“We will focus on the PC market in China in the first stage, as rivals like Microsoft have not released their game consoles there yet,” he said.
Since 2000, China has banned the sale of video game consoles and accessories because of fears that children might spend too much time in virtual environments.
Microsoft, Sony Corp and Nintendo Co are all very interested in entering the Chinese market, as the middle class grows and more disposable income is spent on entertainment.
In related news, ITRI was recognized as an Excellent Organization at the Solar Industry Awards (SIA) for developing a high-efficiency photovoltaic (PV) panel antenna integration technology, making it the first Asian country to receive the title, ITRI said yesterday.
The SIA, among the world’s most prestigious awards in the solar energy industry, was established in 2009 by Angel Business Communication Ltd, a publisher of trade magazines in the UK.
David Ridsdale, the chief editor of the company, and a panel of experts from the PV industry have selected ITRI from 2,000 entries as the organization that made the most creative and influential product.
ITRI’s novel antenna uses a panel of PV cells as a metamaterial FSS radome for dual-band operation. A 10 Watt, 72-cell unmodified commercial PV panel is applied as a transparent layer in the first operation band and as a semi-transparent layer in the second operation band to achieve high antenna gain.
The combination of PV cell and antenna with the characteristic of simple construction is suitable for outdoor wireless communication devices such as mobile phones, medium or large access points and portable navigation devices, ITRI said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained