Most Taiwanese businesses are incapable of making industrial robots, computing technology supplier Adlink Technology Inc (凌華科技) chairman Jim Liu (劉鈞) told a forum in Taipei yesterday.
However, local businesses have filled niche markets for service robots and automatic guided vehicles (AGVs), he said.
Liu made what he called “annoying remarks” at a forum in the Taipei World Trade Center, which is one of the side events at the three-day Future Tech exposition that ends today.
It is difficult for other Taiwanese manufacturers to tap into the market of robots as most of the market share was seized by the top robot makers two to three decades ago, Liu said.
About 40 percent of the world’s computers for industrial robots are made by Adlink, he said.
Nonetheless, the development of robots has entered a third generation, which highlights “connectivity” and relies on the high reliability, low latency and wireless communication within the technological infrastructure, he said.
Most manufacturers of industrial robotic arms are less familiar with communications technology, which could become a niche market for Taiwanese businesses, Liu said.
Local businesses hoping to enter the robot manufacturing market should think about two things: How to have access to real-time data connectivity and how to build artificial intelligence applications into robots, he said.
As the nation has good communications infrastructure, domestic manufacturers could start by making mobile robots such as AGVs and service robots for use in medical and long-term care services, he said.
Forum speaker Huang Chun-ju (黃俊儒), a professor at National Chung Cheng University, said society needs to improve promotion of technological knowledge.
Most of Taiwan’s good scientific news reports appear around the time when Nobel laureates of scientific awards are announced, but those at other times are more concerned about celebrity gossip or report incorrect information, Huang said.
One example was of a doctor in a local TV drama series who placed electrocardiography patches on a patient’s forehead instead of on the patient’s chest, he said.
Seeing movies — such as An Inconvenient Truth and Interstella — can inspire discussions about science, he said, adding that Taiwanese should create better narratives, which present correct information and scenarios that are closer to real life.
Organized by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Taipei Computer Association, the exposition is to announce the most popular technological award among 109 showcased technologies today.
GROWING OWINGS: While Luxembourg and China swapped the top three spots, the US continued to be the largest exposure for Taiwan for the 41st consecutive quarter The US remained the largest debtor nation to Taiwan’s banking sector for the 41st consecutive quarter at the end of September, after local banks’ exposure to the US market rose more than 2 percent from three months earlier, the central bank said. Exposure to the US increased to US$198.896 billion, up US$4.026 billion, or 2.07 percent, from US$194.87 billion in the previous quarter, data released by the central bank showed on Friday. Of the increase, about US$1.4 billion came from banks’ investments in securitized products and interbank loans in the US, while another US$2.6 billion stemmed from trust assets, including mutual funds,
AI TALENT: No financial details were released about the deal, in which top Groq executives, including its CEO, would join Nvidia to help advance the technology Nvidia Corp has agreed to a licensing deal with artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Groq, furthering its investments in companies connected to the AI boom and gaining the right to add a new type of technology to its products. The world’s largest publicly traded company has paid for the right to use Groq’s technology and is to integrate its chip design into future products. Some of the start-up’s executives are leaving to join Nvidia to help with that effort, the companies said. Groq would continue as an independent company with a new chief executive, it said on Wednesday in a post on its Web
Even as the US is embarked on a bitter rivalry with China over the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI), Chinese technology is quietly making inroads into the US market. Despite considerable geopolitical tensions, Chinese open-source AI models are winning over a growing number of programmers and companies in the US. These are different from the closed generative AI models that have become household names — ChatGPT-maker OpenAI or Google’s Gemini — whose inner workings are fiercely protected. In contrast, “open” models offered by many Chinese rivals, from Alibaba (阿里巴巴) to DeepSeek (深度求索), allow programmers to customize parts of the software to suit their
JOINT EFFORTS: MediaTek would partner with Denso to develop custom chips to support the car-part specialist company’s driver-assist systems in an expanding market MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s largest mobile phone chip designer, yesterday said it is working closely with Japan’s Denso Corp to build a custom automotive system-on-chip (SoC) solution tailored for advanced driver-assistance systems and cockpit systems, adding another customer to its new application-specific IC (ASIC) business. This effort merges Denso’s automotive-grade safety expertise and deep vehicle integration with MediaTek’s technologies cultivated through the development of Media- Tek’s Dimensity AX, leveraging efficient, high-performance SoCs and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to offer a scalable, production-ready platform for next-generation driver assistance, the company said in a statement yesterday. “Through this collaboration, we are bringing two
RSS