Kaist

[Kukmin Future Forum] “End of ..

“The new industrial ecosystem brought on by the 4th industrial revolution will be based on technologies that connect everything in the entire world, from people to objects. In order to adapt, we need to activate a culture of convergence.” Director Yoo Byeong-kyu of the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics & Trade, the first presenter at the Kukmin Future Forum held on the 21st said, “The impact of the 4th industrial revolution will reach across all industries and society, bringing the existing system to an end”. He stressed that “a culture of convergence should be activated, and socioeconomic systems should be reformed.” In his presentation on the topic ‘Industrial Paradigm Shift’, Director Yoo said, “The 4th industrial revolution will take place much faster than the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd industrial revolutions, and have a tremendously wide scope of influence.” He also projected that it would “bring down existing industrial sectors and create new ones.” According to Director Yoo, in the 4th industrial revolution, innovation in science and technology will enter the ‘intelligent’ phase. Whereas the 1st and 2nd industrial revolutions reduced the physical toll on humans, and the 3rd industrial revolution facilitated the distribution of information, the 4th industrial revolution will see technology outperforming the human brain. In the 4th industrial revolution, productivity and efficiency will be maximized. This is not always advantageous to us. There could be ‘reshoring’ of manufacturing processes by advanced nations, as they no longer need to place factories in countries with cheaper labor. Director Yoo pointed out that “Countries with inefficient manufacturing processes like Korea suffer in this competition.” Another characteristic of the 4th industrial revolution is convergence. There will be convergence between production and consumption, as well as manufacturing and services. Director Yoo observed that “there will be new groups of consumers such as ‘prosumers’ who directly participate in the convergence of production and consumption, as well as ‘smartsumers’ who use mobile technologies to collect benefits meticulously.” Companies will be tasked with equipping themselves with production systems catering to these new consumers. The convergence of manufacturing and services is already ongoing. American company General Electric recently transformed itself into a service provider. It not only manufactures and sells products, but also provides maintenance services. Aircraft manufacturer Boeing and Japanese construction machinery manufacturer Komatsu have been seeing greater profits with new business models combining manufacturing and service. Director Yoo proposed the ‘activation of convergence culture’ as the first condition for responding appropriately to the changing industrial ecosystem. He stressed that “the 4th industrial revolution is based on technologies that intensify ‘hyper-connectivity’”, noting that “it’s important to build institutional foundations to facilitate convergence.” The next condition is the construction of a ‘society-wide system of compromise’. With new industries coming up against existing industries in the 4th industrial revolution, social problems such as a decline in the number of jobs and growing income disparity may occur. Director Yoo proposes “the construction of a system to facilitate compromise and mediation between stakeholders.” As Korea is lagging behind other major economies in responding to the 4th industrial revolution, there is an urgent need to help small and medium startups develop technological capabilities rapidly. It is also important to ensure that talented individuals who want to start their own businesses are supported institutionally. Director Yoo stressed that “the 4th industrial revolution is no longer an abstract concept, but rapidly taking place in fields such as self-driving cars.” He also mentioned that “Korea needs to build new economic, industrial, and social systems accordingly as soon as possible”. The presentation was followed by a panel and general discussion, during which Professor Kim Jong-hwan, Dean of the College of Engineering, KAIST said, “Education is the most important factor in driving convergence in the 4th industrial revolution.” He further added, “KAIST is envisioning its future as a global educational institution which exports its education programs to other countries.” To this, the moderator of the discussion, Director Kim Jin-hyeong of the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute responded, “I agree that software education is important… I read a special report titled ‘The 4th Industrial Revolution, People are the Answer’ on the front page and page 8 of Kukmin Ilbo today, which discussed the issue of software education in schools. This was very timely.”

[SEDaily] Nvidia seeks KAIST i..

In August 2014, master’s and doctorate program candidates take a group photo together in front of Apple headquarters during their participation at a seminar held at Silicon Valley, US, hosted by the research laboratory under KAIST Professor Jeong-Ho Kim (third from the left). Soo-Min Choi (right) who participated at the event is currently doing an internship at Nvidia and plans to officially join Nvidia after obtaining his doctorate degree next year. /photo credit=Professor Jeong-Ho Kim Recently, KAIST College of Engineering Dean Jong-Hwan Kim (School of Electrical Engineering professor) received an unexpected email. It was from Jensen Huang CEO of Nvidia, a leader in the artificial intelligence (AI) computing field, revealing his intent on sponsoring the AI World Cup hosted by KAIST. Huang even proposed to “jointly establish an AI robotics research center.” On the 31st, KAIST Director of Office of Research Affairs Jung-Ho Kim revealed that “the establishment of an AI robotics research center for the continuous R&D and cultivation of professional human resources in the AI field is currently being discussed with Nvidia”. Kim also said that “(Nvidia) hopes to be one step ahead technologically through this research center and their intent to secure AI intellects appear to be strong.” While there was the match between professional Go player Sedol Lee of 9 dan rank and AlphaGo, this is the first time that an AI competition was held over sports. This competition to be held in November invites undergraduate and graduate students and will involve 5 mini robots that learned on their own based on AI technology to make one team where the team with the most goals through the opponent team’s goal posts wins. In addition to the AI soccer players, there are two categories of AI commentator that analyzes videos of the match and provides commentary and AI reporter that writes up the match results into a news article. Each match is carried out by executing the AI algorithm program developed by each team and uploaded to a computer server. The soccer match between the mini robots is shown on-screen followed by the match commentary and article composition. As the competition to entice AI talent grows fiercer worldwide, efforts to take the lead have taken various forms including CEOs of global companies directly contacting Korean universities. Nvidia, Google, Apple, Facebook, and Intel among others are actively seeking intellectuals in Korea. The scope of headhunting has expanded from Korean students studying abroad in laboratories in prominent US engineering universities to Korean university students with research achievements or original ideas. The technology firms have begun their search for skilled talent beyond national borders. KAIST Professor Jeong-Ho Kim is explaining the recent semiconductor design technology to Intel at the Intel headquarters located in Silicon Valley, US, in August 2014. Dr. Ga-Won Kim (second from left in the right line) and Yoo-Jung Shim (third) sitting next to Professor Kim (first) had received offers from Intel afterwards and are not currently working in Silicon Valley. /photo credit=Professor Jeong-Ho Kim Such offers are concentrated towards students and specialists in fields related to the 4th Industrial Revolution such as AI, big data, and robotics. In the last three years, around 45 KAIST graduates from the Schools of Electrical Engineering and Computing have been scouted by Nvidia, Apple, and Intel. Around 10 Seoul National University School of Engineering graduates have also been scouted by Silicon Valley. Among the 70 or so alumni of Professor Kim’s laboratory, researching 3-dimensional semiconductor design, around 23 students are working in Silicon Valley. Dae-Hyun Jeong, who joined Nvidia 10 years ago and participated in the semiconductor design part, is currently working as an AI server module designer and manager. With the recommendation of alumni senior Jeong, Soo-Min Choi (KAIST School of Electrical Engineering) began her internship at Nvidia early this year and is expected to join Nvidia after receiving her doctorate degree in August next year. Professor Kim said that “Choi would frequently meet CEO Huang in the hallway and greet him comfortably ? not only that, a while back Huang invited Choi to his home for a meal together”. Professor Kim continued, “Global IT companies are focusing their efforts in acquiring skilled specialists for the 4th Industrial Revolution, especially AI, regardless of nationality and age.” He also added that “the scarcity in AI talent has led to Silicon Valley firms taking an interest in undergraduate students as well.” Companies are quickly finding students with research achievements and potential through internship programs. Like this, global IT firms can maintain their dominance in the search for talent due to their high annual income level, stock options, and company name value as industry leaders. A researcher that has just joined a large Silicon Valley company is guaranteed an average annual income of 130,000 US dollars (approximately 150 million Korean won) and significant stock options. Those with outstanding research accomplishments are also provided visas offered for scouted top intellects. Dr. Ga-Won Kim and Dr. Yoo-Jung Shim, both KAIST graduates and currently working at Intel and Apple, decided to work in the US after being offered scout visas. /Reporter Min-Jeong Jeong jminj＠sedaily.com >> Link to the original news article http://www.sedaily.com/NewsView/1OJYSFXHXO/

[iRobot News] What is Robot Te..

On the 23rd, KAIST announced the Top 10 Core Patent Technologies of KAIST for 2017, which are technologies with potential for immediate commercialization amongst the technologies that are expected to lead the 4th Industrial Revolution. The university said that the top 10 technologies were selected from outstanding technologies patented through research and development by taking into consideration the applicability to various fields, market size, and technological innovation with a focus on the technologies that are expected to dominate the 4th Industrial Revolution with significant ripple effects such as ICT (Information and Communications Technology), unmanned transportation, artificial intelligence, robotics, IoT (Internet of Things), nanotechnology, and big data analysis. The selected technologies will receive support for prototype manufacturing through business model development, priority domestic and international marketing, and IP R&D analysis. A large scale presentation event will be held on September 12 at the Seoul COEX, inviting about 200 people including company officials interested in the top 10 core patent technologies. This event is a part of the technology commercialization innovation that KAIST President Sung-Chul Shin presented as one of five innovations for KAIST when he was inaugurated in March this year. The presentation event will provide detailed information on the technologies and on-site consultation regarding technology transfer. Among the announced top 10 technologies, technologies that can be applied to robotics and autonomous driving vehicles are introduced here. ▲Digital lifeform generation system and control method for emotion-based conversations depending on the emotions of the user (Professor Jong-Hwan Kim) Developed by Professor Kim, the digital lifeform technology that provides emotional services according to the emotions of the user analyzes the external, vocal, and inclination data for the user and stores them to a digital DNA. A new digital lifeform is generated based on the digital DNA and an emotional service is provided to the user through the generated lifeform optimized for the user. Conversations with stories are possible between the user and the digital lifeform, and hence it is expected that the technology can be applied to hardware training robots, entertainment, and healthcare fields for treatment of depression and sense of loneliness. ▲Laser integrated precision measurement system for smart factory implementation (Professor Seung-Woo Kim) The laser integrated precision measurement system technology for smart factory implementation applies multi-target measurement technology to production facilities to carry out real-time diagnosis for changes of the facilities in the production line and simultaneous diagnoses of multiple facilities using a single measurement device. Various measurement data are then integrated with artificial intelligence to correct the production facility in real-time. Improvement of the measurement system precision can enhance product quality, and the technology can be applied to thermal deformation measurements of large scale precision facilities, alignment of large structures, and monitoring of machine tools. ▲Location recognition and map-making for autonomous driving of indoor and outdoor moving robots (Professor Hyun Myung) Location recognition and map-making technology for autonomous driving of indoor and outdoor moving robots is a high performance navigation technology employing low cost equipment. Since conventional low cost sensors were integrated, response to various environments is possible and the disadvantages of each sensor can be compensated for, resulting in accurate location data collection within an average of 10cm even for dynamic environments. Professor Myung explained that “the conventional technology had large errors for location recognition in dynamic environments and outdoor environments required expensive sensors so it is expected that the location recognition and map-making technology using low cost sensors and applicable to various environments will be in the spotlight.” ▲Miniature, low power, high linearity 5G beamforming IC optimization using variable gain phase shifter (Professor Sung-Chul Hong) This technology is a miniature, low power, high linearity beamforming IC technology with a novel structure for 5G mobile communications. The miniature IC was realized by removing the damper and a variable gain phase shifter was fabricated to minimize the phase error according to the gain variation, resulting in increased efficiency at low power. This 5G mobile communications technology key to the 4th Industrial Revolution is applicable to IoT (Internet of Things) and 5G vehicle-to-everything (V2X). ▲Beamforming based multi-channel radio resource integration for 5G communication capacity increase (Professor Dong-Ho Cho) The beamforming based multi-channel radio resource clustering technology for 5G communications capacity increase is a core 5G mobile communications technology that enables large capacity transmissions of N-fold by integrating N pattern/polarization antennas. Enhanced communication speed, reduced interference, and reduced transmission power consumption are expected effects of this technology, which is applicable to autonomous driving communication infrastructures. Other technologies announced in the top 10 included the ▲healthcare IoT (Internet of Things) gas sensor for early diagnosis of patients using their outbreathing(Professor Il-Doo Kim), ▲Personalized cancer therapy using big data and body network simulation (Professor Gwang-Hyun Cho), ▲High sensitivity strain sensor for human body motion detection (Professor Oh-Ok Park), ▲Hradware based chip & flash memory data security (Professor Yang-Kyu Choi), ▲Near-infrared neuroimaging bio healthcare device (Professor Hyun-Min Bae). Kil-Soo Jang ksjang＠irobotnews.com >> Link to the original news article http://www.irobotnews.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=11515

[The Hankook-Ilbo] KAIST Dean ..

KAIST Dean Holds World’s First AI Soccer Competition KAIST School of Engineering Dean Jong-Hwan Kim, who created the world’s very first robot soccer tournament, will hold the world’s first “AI World Cup 2017” tournament in November, integrating artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. On the 11th, KAIST announced that there are three categories to the competition: five players that carried out learning through AI technology comprise one team to play AI soccer followed by AI match commentators and AI reporters that writes news articles based on the match outcome. The soccer match is conducted by executing the AI technology execution program submitted by each team and uploaded to a computer server. Each player should recognize the situation taking place online and perform learning on its own to proceed with the match. The AI commentator provides commentary of the match situation shown online in an easy to understand manner for regular people as well as explaining predictions of the players and the match outcome. The AI reporter writes a news article based on the match results. Undergraduate and graduate school students all over the country are eligible to participate. After an online practice period of one month during October, preliminaries are conducted from November 1~24 where the 16 teams with the highest cumulative match scores will participate in the finals on December 1. Dean Kim explained the motive behind holding the competition. “People know about AI research overseas such as AlphaGo but are not familiar with the AI research carried out domestically,” he said. “One aspect of holding the competition was to let the people know more about AI related R&D and technology application and stimulate their interest in the field.” To prepare for the tournament, KAIST established the “AI World Cup Organizing Committee” last month with Dean Kim as the committee chair. The committee is composed of six subcommittees including the steering and competition committees. KAIST professors in the School of Electrical Engineering, School of Computing, Department of Aerospace Engineering, Department of the Cho Chun Shik Graduate School for Green Transportation, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Graduate School of Culture Technology, and Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy are participating and taking roles in the committee. Dean Kim said that he plans to expand the number of soccer players to 11 and open up applications to international students so that the tournament can establish itself as an international competition and he will introduce the AI soccer tournament during his lecture at the general meeting on a visit to France to participate in an International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) meeting. Applications will be taken until September 30 through the website (http://mir.kaist.ac.kr) after inputting the participating competition category. On the 28th, a presentation is planned to explain how to use the system and the participation method for interested students. Also, an open demonstration game is prepared for the OPEN-KAIST event on November 2~3. >> Link to the original news article http://www.hankookilbo.com/v/a99fe47db3414cc1a2809c1a113721b5

[iRobot News] Successful Machi..

▲Research progress is presented at the 2017 1st Machine Intelligence Learning Workshop held at the KAIST Institute main hall in Daejeon. A workshop was successfully held, overviewing the progress of the machine intelligence learning algorithm research project for the Artificial Intelligence Flagship Project “Digital Companion” through support from the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, and searching for future directions with regard to the project. The 2017 1st Machine Intelligence Learning Workshop was held at the KAIST Institute main hall in Daejeon on the past 14th where 250 participants were present including research and development project personnel, company officials, and participating researchers. ▲ Participants listen to the lecture on machine intelligence learning. A total of 22 research topics were presented for 10 minutes each. Despite the short research period, in-depth research progress was presented covering issues including adaptability of the current machine learning algorithm for new learning data and autonomy to learn independently without human interference. The presentation hall became host to the sharing and exchange of new artificial intelligence technologies and theories that change rapidly. ▲ Project Head Jong-Hwan Kim KAIST MIR MSREP (Machine Intelligence and Robotics Multi-Sponsored Research and Education Platform) Head Jong-Hwan Kim, who oversees the entire project, said, “We aim to develop practical machine intelligence learning algorithms that can be applied to the digital companion platform to manage our everyday lives - learning models based on long term memory, algorithms that learn human intelligence, automatic differentiation of objects, and technologies that can recognize various situations that can occur in everyday life through interaction between people and digital companions - and plan to transfer them to companies.” ▲ Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP) Institute for Information and Communications Technology Promotion (IITP) SW Computing CP Hyung-Chul Kim Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP) Institute for Information and Communications Technology Promotion (IITP) SW Computing CP Hyung-Chul Kim, who planned and oversees the digital companion development project, introduced the vision of the future for the digital companion and the core missions that need to be solved in his address at the workshop as well as expressing high expectations for the development of the learning algorithm currently underway at KAIST. >> Link to the original news article http://www.irobotnews.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=10399

[iRobot News] First Machine In..

Hosted by the Machine Intelligence and Robotics Multi-Sponsored Research and Education Platform (MIR MSREP Head: KAIST Professor Jong-Hwan Kim), the 1st Machine Intelligence Learning Open Workshop will be held on the coming 14th in the 2nd Floor Matrix Hall of the KAIST KI Building in Daejeon. MIR MSREP was founded by the KAIST College of Engineering Information and Electrical Research Center based on the Intelligence Information Flagship Research and Development Project (2016.12 ~ 2020.12) funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning and Institute for Information and Communications Technology Promotion (IITP). This workshop will commemorate the establishment of the research and education platform. The Intelligence Information Flagship Research and Development Project aims to develop adaptive machine learning technology that autonomously expands through learning of collected user and environmental multi-modal data from continuous interaction between the user and a digital companion in everyday life situations. The fundamental goal lies in the development of machine intelligence learning technology, which is an intelligence learning that simulates the thought process of humans by computers or robots. MIR MSREP plans to pursue various endeavors including support of participating companies in the platform, international joint research, and cultivation of KAIST master’s and doctorate program students in the field of AI, bringing together theory and skills through research and development as well as agreements with companies that seek AI human resources. Companies, research institutes, and students following AI technology are invited to participate in this workshop. Participation applications are taken until the 11th and applicants can submit the applications to hywoo＠rit.kaist.ac.kr with the following information: name/affiliation/position/contact number/email address.