The Barsys 2.0 will use artificial intelligence to keep drinks consistent.

The Barsys 2.0 will be available from July 22, priced at US$1,500 (approx Bt46,000). That’s quite a jump from competitors like Drinkworks, which offers its Home Bar for $299. But the company is hoping Barsys 2.0 might also appeal to bars and restaurants.

The device has a 21.5-inch screen with full HD resolution for clear details as well as an anti-glare coating with reduced parallax to help minimize distractions and replicate a pen-to-paper-like feel. Its display has a 210 cd/m² brightness rating, 1000:1 static contrast ratio, wide 178° viewing angles, and support for up to 16.7 million colours with 72 per cent NTSC color coverage.

The Cintiq 22 comes with a Wacom Pro Pen 2, a natural and precise stylus that has four times the pressure sensitivity (8192 pressure levels) and accuracy compared to its previous version. The Wacom Pro Pen 2 is designed for graphical tablets and provides you with smooth and responsive writing or drawing experience.

The Cintiq 22 features 8192 levels of pressure sensitivity; 60-degree tilt recognition, two side buttons, and virtually lag-free tracking. It’s also built with Electro-Magnetic Resonance (EMR) technology for battery-free use. Aside from the Pro Pen 2, a set of accessories are included such as a pen holder, replacement nibs, and a nib removal tool. User can connect the tablet to a Mac or Windows computer via HDMI and USB 2.0 cables.

Company revenue could easily reach 100 million yuan ($14.54 million), with applications possible in a wide range of areas including public security, customs and hospitals, said Mak, co-founder and chief technology officer of Roborn Dynamics.

Through a self-developed algorithm, four controlling sensors, and the operator’s body and finger movements, the robot can be directly controlled at the whim of the user, he said.

The technology can help in life-threatening missions as well as in rehabilitation and education. A mid-to high-end Roborn robot costs about 400,000 yuan.

Founded in 2017, Roborn started collaborating on 5G applications with telecom operator China Mobile and telecom vendor ZTE Corp in November.

Thanks to the large bandwidth and low time delays, 5G technology allows smoother robot actions and better synchronization between the operator and the robot, he said.

“Telecom operators are also promoting 5G applications. I’m optimistic about the market,” Mak said, adding that his team has promoted the products in almost all provinces in the country.

The company employs seven people in Hong Kong for project management and software development and about 50 in Jiangmen, Guangdong province, where a research and development center is located and a manufacturing facility is planned. The staff at the center is set to exceed 100 by the end of this year.

It also runs a sales and management office in Guangzhou and electric motor developing operations in Dongguan, two other cities in Guangdong.

The greater integration of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area has provided greater convenience for Hong Kong startups and more flexibility to employees, Mak said, citing easier transport via a high-speed railway and the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, as well as favorable personal income tax rates on Hong Kong and Macao talent working in Guangdong cities in the area.

Apart from financial support from the Hong Kong government, the company – as an entrepreneurial and innovative entity – has also received support in Guangdong such as preferential rental rates, access to an industrial fund and housing subsidies.

Such support is helpful to the company and it plans to talk with investors as it anticipates rapid business expansion, Mak said.

The outline development plan for the Greater Bay Area released in February pledges to “support young people and micro, small and medium-sized enterprises from Hong Kong and Macao to realize their development potential on the mainland, extend local entrepreneurship subsidies, (provide) support to cover eligible entrepreneurs from Hong Kong and Macao and proactively take forward the development of youth entrepreneurship and employment bases for Hong Kong and Macao”.

Roborn will draft a development blueprint closely related to 5G development in China, he said.

The company has also signed up for an entrepreneurship and innovation competition in Guangdong province.

The Community Entrepreneurs Cup competition will take place later this year with contestants from Hong Kong and Macao to attend.

Focused on serving the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, the competition is meant to facilitate the commercialization of scientific and technological research results and the industrial chain in the region, it was announced at a news conference last month in preparation for the competition.

Sunti Medhavikul, managing director of UIH, said as a digital infrastructure and solution provider, UIH uses its digital infrastructure of cloud, networks and cyber security to serve customers’ demands and help them achieve digital transformation.

UIH’s infrastructure was built to serve emerging technologies such as data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain.

These emerging technologies will generate a large amount of data and they require real-time processing power. Digital infrastructure needs to restructure to become more scalable, agile, and efficient to cope up with the changes, Sunti said. “Such demand drives the higher need of cloud computing which, therefore means the higher need for decent data centres,” Sunit said. “We estimate the compound annual growth rate of data center services in Thailand will grow approximately 15 per cent from 2020 to 2025.”

Sunti said the opening of UIH BCH4, in the Benchachinda Building in Chatuchak, will enhance the company’s capability to fulfil customers’ requirements as well as lift itself to become “a data centre as a service provider” in Thailand.

“Data centres are regarded as the backbone of digital economy infrastructure in the new era. It not only helps enhance the organization’s IT system to be more reliable and flexible, but also accelerate the development of new innovation to come out to the market faster. So, the services offered through the UIH BCH4 data centre will be a foundation to enhance the organization’s ICT infrastructure to achieve digital transformation,” Sunti said.

Panitharn Payackapan, data centre services business unit head at UIH, said the UIH BCH4 comes with 300-rack capacity, design and facilities that meets international standards and is a carrier-neutral data centre. “The highlight of UIH BCH4 comprises standards, security, and connectivity,” Panitharn said.

“For co-location, UIH operates comprehensive IT facilities whereby customers can place their servers, or IT systems supported by corporate grade high-speed internet provided to its tenants as a default. Customers may go for half rack or full rack, which is equipped with fully redundant uninterrupted power systems in properly controlled environment.

“For private area, the service is to provide a metal cage surrounding the racks to offer higher security with multi-factor authentication for access control. For business continuity office, UIH offers office space with high-speed internet to customers. In case of emergencies, customers can use the facilities to smoothly run and continue their business with no interruption.

“For smart-hand service, UIH can perform basic and non-complicated tasks at customer racks on customers’ behalf based on agreed procedures. This service is offered for customers who don’t want to come to data center to perform such simple tasks.”

The company has solidified its leading position by expanding into Singapore with support from Enterprise Singapore, the government agency under the Singapore Ministry of Trade and Industry driving enterprise development. As part of its work, the agency also develops Singapore as a global-Asia node for startup and innovation. RISE is supported under the agency’s Startup SG Accelerator programme providing mentorship and resources to support the growth of start-ups based in Singapore. RISE’s vision is to build up the region’s capabilities and community, to exchange ideas and to internationalise both new and old businesses alike. It aims to transform Southeast Asia into one of the most productive, dynamic and vibrant global hubs for corporate innovation, global trading and start-ups ecosystem in the world.

As a Start-up SG Accelerator partner, RISE will help Singaporean start-ups to plug into Thailand’s innovation ecosystem and work with local partners to contribute solutions to the market needs and globally. This will be done through utilizsing RISE’s own network of more than 200 corporate and governmental agencies worldwide to connect and catapult start-ups into a wider international arena. This two-way relationship also means that more than 1,000 Growth-stage Start0ups in the RISE Network can make Singapore the first country to launch their business in Southeast Asia outside their home country, and reap the benefits of directly accessing one of the world’s most start-up friendly cities in the world.

With its singular blend of Eastern and Western perspectives and outlooks, Singapore an unmatched location for live testing of new ideas, products, and services. Successes and failures can be gauged quickly, and in the case of success will open a gateway to the wider Southeast and North Asia market.

“Many start-ups fail not because they lack great ideas but because they lack product-market fit. Product development should be driven by a market need and customer validation from potential users, said Jonathan Lim, Enterprise Singapore’s Director for Global Innovation Network.

“Against this backdrop, Enterprise Singapore is happy to partner with RISE in its inaugural AI program to enable startups to work closely with regional corporates to co-develop solutions targeted at resolving specific pain points and problem statements. Innovation does not occur in isolation and we need various ecosystem players such as RISE to connect people and ideas to foster collaboration.”

The new designs are aimed at bringing more diversity to the keyboard, alongside fun and exciting additions to popular categories of food, animals, activities and smiley faces, the company said.

In a major update to the Holding Hands emoji typically used to represent couples and relationships, users will now be able to select any combination of skin tone, in addition to gender, to personalise the people holding hands, opening up more than 75 possible combinations.

Following Apple’s proposal to the Unicode Consortium last year to introduce more disability-themed emoji, a new guide dog, an ear with a hearing aid, wheelchairs, a prosthetic arm and a prosthetic leg will be available in the emoji keyboard.

Many additional emoji categories are getting updates with a new smiley face for yawning, a one-piece swimsuit, new food items including a waffle, falafel, butter and garlic, and new animals like the sloth, flamingo, orangutan and skunk.

Fifty-nine new emoji designs will be available with a free software update for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch, the company said. Thousands of emoji are currently available, including emotive smiley faces, gender-neutral characters, more professions, various clothing options, food types, animals, mythical creatures and more. New emoji are created based on the approved characters in Unicode 12.0.

Indications that the city is fast becoming a national and global highland for AI became evident after 20 tech giants like IBM, Microsoft, Alibaba and a research facility affiliated to Tongji University decided to set up shop in Shanghai’s AIsland, a dedicated hub in the Zhangjiang Science City in Shanghai’s Pudong New Area.

The 66,000-square-meter hub is the latest demonstration of a central government decision in May to launch the Shanghai National Pilot Area for the Innovative Development of New-Generation AI, the first of its kind nationwide.

“AI’s application requires coordinated adaptation to real-life scenarios,” said Xia Yuzhong, who oversees AI and information services at the Science and Economy Commission of Shanghai Pudong New Area.

“We hope these top-tier AI companies can lead the industrial application and innovation aggregation of AI and generate more transferable and duplicable experiences to other parts of the country.”

The AI zone, which is expected to see more than 30 application scenarios, will conduct a number of pilot programs such as smart parking, intelligent lighting, environment monitoring and unmanned convenience stores, said Han Lu, deputy general economist of Shanghai Zhangjiang Group Co Ltd, operator of the zone.

“The pilot zone should be a prototype mimicking what future cosmopolitan life should look like, “Han said, adding that the zone will feature the city’s first 5G+AI pilot zone and host over 8,000 research and development personnel.

Microsoft opened an AI and internet of things lab on the “island” in May. This is its third and largest such facility worldwide, through which the first batch of 30 clients stand to benefit from turning prototyping into products by leveraging Microsoft’s AI and internet of things (IoT) solutions, said Lin Miaojing, project director of the Microsoft AI and IoT lab.

Shanghai is dedicated to making AI and smart manufacturing two key pillars to drive its economy, of which 70 percent comes from modern services.

To shore up growth in the real economy, Shanghai has pledged to build two world-class smart manufacturing industrial clusters focusing on automobile and electronics information, as the city strives to achieve 100 indigenous breakthroughs in core technologies by 2021.

The city’s Three-Year Plan on Smart Manufacturing, which was officially approved by the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization on Tuesday, has put forward a goal to make intelligent manufacturing equipment a 130-billion-yuan ($18.9 billion) industry, recording a compound annual growth rate of 15 percent.

Among them, robotics and related systems are expected to account for 60 billion yuan, ranking first nationwide.

The commission, which is responsible for the plan’s implementation, said it will prioritize the nurturing of a batch of unicorn firms and “hidden champion” companies on critical equipment and core components.

These include fostering 10 listed companies on the country’s technology-focused board, the STAR Market, leading the formulation of over 50 standards on smart manufacturing, as well as nurturing the establishment of two to three national and three to five public service platforms of industrial influence.

It will promote the adoption of 5G communications, AI and big data in the application of smart manufacturing. It is also eyeing to create industrial synergies across the Yangtze River Delta Region.

On the implementation front, the municipality has vowed to establish 100 national level pilot smart factories, 1,000 pilot plants that received mutual recognition among the Yangtze Delta Region, and promote the intelligent transformation of 10,000 factories.

Jupiter Chain allows users to keep their personal data private by encrypting the data and requiring consent before other parties can access the necessary information to conduct Big Data analytics projects. The team behind it envisions a future where users can get customised healthcare plans from their aggregated medical data, while the data remains secure and private to them. Assessors only gain permission to analyse the relevant data when individuals give consent, and are unable to access the raw data.

The company said healthcare business owners will also no longer have to be custodians to user data, avoiding hiccups in securing sensitive data. At its full potential in the healthcare ecosystem, this eliminates the risks of data sharing and increases the benefits to consumers and researchers.

“With Jupiter Chain, JEDTrade hopes to fundamentally change the way we handle data. From day-to-day interactions to large-scale processes, enterprise blockchain technology will change the way we live, with new industries hungry for solutions. We are ready, and look forward to delivering them,” said Dr Ernie Teo, CTO of JEDTrade.

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