Thirty-two Taiwanese start-ups plan to attend the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas next month and the nation’s booth at the trade exhibition is to be the third-largest after those of France and the Netherlands, Minister of Science and Technology Chen Liang-gee (陳良基) told a news conference in Taipei on Tuesday.
The CES, which is to take place from Jan. 9 to Jan. 12, is the world’s biggest annual consumer electronics show, where technology giants and start-ups demonstrate their cutting-edge developments, Chen said, adding that this is the first time the ministry has convened a delegation to join the show.
The start-up teams are to present technologies that connect to five trends: artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, “smart” wearables, “smart” biotechnology and medicine applications, and virtual reality and augmented reality applications, he said.
Photo: Huang Yao-cheng, Taipei Times
Ministry officials are to host a “Taiwan night” networking event with foreign guests, including delegates from the Royal House of the Netherlands and the French Ministry for the Economy and Finance, Deputy Minister of Science and Technology Hsu Yu-chin (許有進) said.
The ministry expects a commercial value of about NT$300 million (US$10.1 million) from the teams’ participation in the convention, Hsu added.
Robotelf Technologies Co has been awarded the Robotics and Drones Innovation Award for its home security robot.
Equipped with face recognition and “big data” collection technology, the robot can enhance long-term care services, children’s education and security monitoring, and analyze consumer behavior, the company’s overseas sales representative David Luo (駱威郡) said while demonstrating a beta version on Tuesday.
The robot costs about NT$20,000, less than similar models, which sell for NT$40,000 to NT$100,000 or more, Luo said.
The company is refining its robotics and autonomous systems while expanding its applications, he added.
In related news, a three-day “Future Tech” exhibition organized by the ministry and the Taipei Computer Association opened yesterday and is to run through tomorrow at Taipei World Trade Center Hall 3.
The show features 109 new technologies related to “smart” applications, biotechnology, medicine, electronics and chemical engineering, the ministry said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching