Hsinchu City is planning to launch Taiwan’s first test program for driverless logistics vehicles, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday at an event to announce a collaboration among the ministry, the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) and HCT Logistics Co (新竹物流).
The test program is to use 5-tonne trucks and travel 1.9km in some of the busiest traffic in Hsinchu City, the ministry said.
Driverless vehicle technology developed in other countries is not suitable for the circumstances and lane divisions found on local roads, such as the numbers of scooters and their allocations at stop lights, ITRI president Edwin Liu (劉文雄) said, adding that ITRI is filling the need for local development of the technology.
Photo: Hung Mei-hsiu, Taipei Times
“ITRI’s self-driving technology is specially designed for the traffic conditions of Taiwan and Asia. We have already overcome the challenges of mixed car and scooter traffic and the long rainy season,” Liu said.
This particular project is the first driverless pilot program to utilize vehicles for warehouse logistics, and the first to explore the burgeoning logistics market.
“HCT moves more than 450,000 parcels in the Greater Hsinchu area every month,” company president Pablo Lee (李正義) said yesterday. “After we successfully introduce self-driving technology, our first goal is to reduce traffic at our logistic center by 20 percent.”
The company also expects that the development of the program would help solve driver shortage problems and reduce driver workload, Lee said.
The ministry said that all self-driving vehicles are still in the testing phase, with full commercialization “still in the future.”
The testing of self-driving vehicles on public roads among regular traffic was made possible when the Unmanned Vehicles Technologies Innovative Experimentation Act (無人載具科技創新實驗條例) was passed in 2018. Before that, there was no legal framework to test driverless vehicles in open traffic.
Although there are vehicles in Taiwan with some degree of self-driving capability, drivers are only allowed to deploy the technology for assistance.
US PROBE: The Information reported that the US Department of Commerce is investigating whether the firm made advanced chips for China’s Huawei Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract maker of advanced chips, yesterday said it is a law-abiding company, and is committed to complying with all applicable laws and regulations including export controls. The Hsinchu-based chip giant issued the statement after US news Web site The Information ran a story saying that the US Department of Commerce has launched a probe into TSMC over whether it breached export rules by making smartphone or artificial intelligence (AI) chips for China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為). “We maintain a robust and comprehensive export system for monitoring and ensuring compliance,” the statement said. “If we
DEMAND FOR AI CHIPS: Net income in the third quarter surged 31.2% quarter-on-quarter to NT$325.26 billion, the strongest quarterly return in the company’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, yesterday raised its revenue forecast to annual growth of 30 percent this year, thanks to strong and sustainable demand for artificial intelligence (AI) processors for servers. It was the second upward adjustment from 25 percent year-on-year growth estimated three months ago, despite recent concerns about whether the AI boom could be another technology bubble. “The demand is real. It’s real. And I believe it is just the beginning of this demand. Alright, so one of my key customers said the demand right now is ‘insane,’” TSMC chairman and chief executive C.C.
Starbucks Corp might have the more recognizable name, but 7-Eleven’s City Cafe remains the king of Taiwan’s fresh coffee market, helped by the convenience store chain’s extensive market presence and product diversification. President Chain Store Corp (PCSC, 統一超商), which runs both the 7-Eleven and Starbucks store chains in Taiwan, established the City Cafe brand in 2004. The brand took off when actress Gwei Lun-mei (桂綸鎂) became its spokesperson in 2007. City Cafe’s sales exceeded NT$10 billion (US$311.69 million) for the first time in 2015, surpassing the revenue of Starbucks Taiwan, and rose to more than NT$17 billion last year, exceeding the NT$14.98
COUNTRY-BASED: Setting ceilings on sales of the technology would tighten limits that originally targeted China’s ambitions in artificial intelligence amid security risks US officials have discussed capping sales of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chips from Nvidia Corp and other American companies on a country-specific basis, people familiar with the matter said, a move that would limit some nations’ AI capabilities. The new approach would set a ceiling on export licenses for some countries in the interest of national security, according to the people, who described the private discussions on condition of anonymity. Officials in the administration of US President Joe Biden focused on Persian Gulf countries that have a growing appetite for AI data centers and the deep pockets to fund them, the people