AI Taiwan

Academics and officials from Taiwan and India yesterday held an online meeting to promote a “smart pandemic prevention system” to advance bilateral cooperation in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

The system, developed by National Chung Cheng University (CCU), has the functions of automatic body monitoring, facial recognition and social contact analysis.

The university in March last year started installing the system at the entrances of some buildings, while its Indian collaborator — the Sri Ramaswamy Memorial (SRM) Institute of Science and Technology — started using the system in July last year, CCU Institute of Computer Science and Information Engineering professor Hsiung Pao-ann (熊博安) told the Taipei Times before the meeting.

The meeting was also joined by Indian Department of Science and Technology International Cooperation Division Director Chadaram Sivaji.

The system, which uses a thermal camera to monitor people’s temperature, can also compile data on people’s footprints on campuses, Hsiung said.

To protect personal information, the system’s database is not uploaded to the cloud, and instead operates through edge AI computing, he added.

Given its larger number of students across five campuses, the SRM institute can collect more data to optimize the system’s social contact analysis, while its affiliated hospital could also use the system, Hsiung said.

Both universities have contributed funding to the collaborative project, he said.

In May, the universities plan to start another project to use AI tools to detect fabricated faces and voices in videos, Hsiung said.

The project would be related to fabricated news, as demonstrated by a video that went viral online a few years ago showing former US president Barack Obama making phony speeches, he said.

Hsiung was born in India and moved to Taiwan to study mathematics at National Taiwan University.

When it comes to working with Indians, building friendship is more important than signing a legal contract, Hsiung said.

Taiwan-India cooperation in technology focuses on engineering, information technology and sciences, said Wang Chin-tsan (王金燦), director of the Science and Technology Division at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center in India, who also joined the conference.

Other potential areas include technologies related to green energy, energy storage and biotechnology, Wang said, adding that he also hopes to promote cooperation in low-orbit communications satellites.

Date: 2021-03-25
Source: Taipei Times