A British professor of cognitive neuroscience said in Taipei yesterday that Taiwan and Britain could explore the possibility of working together to build and develop assistance robots.
Sheffield Centre for Robotics director Tony Prescott is a member of Britain’s Robotics and Autonomous Systems Mission, which was in the nation from Thursday last week to yesterday to share information about Britain’s robotics and automation industry and seek bilateral collaboration opportunities.
In a meeting with local media, Prescott said that many British organizations are focusing on research into deep learning — a branch of machine learning — and that many British startups have been working with Google in the field.
Photo: CNA
Britain has a long history in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), and the British government has been pushing to integrate AI research around the UK, he said.
In terms of AI applications, British firms would likely focus on applications that could be used in the fields of medical treatment and language identification, Prescott said.
British firms mainly concentrate on the development of robots for specific purposes, such as those operating on farmland, underwater or serving as air reconnaissance, he said.
Aside from designing new generations of robots for the manufacturing industry, Britain has also developed a prototype of intelligent human-shaped robots, Prescott said.
Consequential Robotics Ltd design director Sebastian Conran said that human-shaped autonomous systems will commonly exist in the everyday lives of humans in the next 50 years.
However, he believes that in a similar way to nuclear power, AI can be misused. It has been estimated that the energy a human-shaped robot requires for walking is 30 times more than that needed for a wheelchair-type robot, Conran said.
Both Prescott and Conran share the opinion that government investment and international cooperation are important for the development of the robotics industry in Taiwan and Britain.
During the press event, National Chiao Tung University’s Institute of Electrical Control Engineering professor Soong Kai-tai (宋開泰) suggested that chipmakers in Taiwan’s information communication technology (ICT) industry could switch their domain to the supply chain of robots and autonomous systems.
Taiwanese ICT talent could find a future in the field of developing and building service robots, Soong said, urging local ICT businesses to get involved with the robotics industry as soon as possible.
Soong is also a managing superviser of the Taiwan Automation Intelligence and Robotics Association.
On Nov. 19, the British delegation attended the International Automatic Control Conference in Yilan County, presenting the UK perspectives on Robotics and Autonomous Systems and introducing recent research developments to local academia and officials at a British Taiwan Robotics workshop, according to a news release from the British Office Taipei.
The global market for industrial robotics is currently worth more than US$25 billion and is forecast to reach US$37 billion by 2018, while the market for service robots is set to increase from US$3.4 billion to US$17.1 billion by next year, the office said.
Investment from British government and industry has been more than £150 million (US$226.9 million) to support cutting-edge research and projects at British universities and companies into the development and application of robotics and autonomous systems, the office said.
“The UK’s world-class strengths in the ICT sector, particularly in software programming, data handling and electronics, mean that it offers an ideal business and research environment for leading international autonomous systems and robotics companies,” the office said.
“This is the first scoping mission to Taiwan from the UK robotics and autonomous systems industries, and the British Office will support further bilateral exchanges in this field in the future,” the news release said.
The British Office represents UK interests in Taiwan in the absence of formal diplomatic ties.
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