Feel the Innovative Power of Taiwan at CES 2019

Article By : EE Times Taiwan

At CES 2019, that will be held in Las Vegas on January 8th, where 44 of new startups from Taiwan will showcase their innovation capabilities to visitors from all over the world.

TAIPEI — Over the past three decades, Taiwan has played an indispensable role in the global electronics and semiconductor industry chain. There are many outstanding technology players on the island helping the world evolve continuously and developing countless electronic products that bring convenience to humanity. Now, Taiwan is fully demonstrating its advantages of "small and beautiful", providing growth nutrients for many new startups with innovative ideas and already having some small achievements — at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that will be held in Las Vegas on January 8th, where 44 of new startups from Taiwan will showcase their innovation capabilities to visitors from all over the world.

In fact, in the new startups exhibition area of "Eureka Park" at CES 2018, a total of 32 Taiwanese new startups led by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) made their debut. In addition to two teams winning the annual CES Innovation Award, some teams even won the favor of international investors with their outstanding performance. Soon to be taking part in CES 2019, the scale of new startups from Taiwan will not only be larger but also more adequately prepared so that CES visitors from all over the world will be deeply impressed by these potential stars of tomorrow. Led by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Taiwan Tech Arena (TTA) was officially open to the general public in Taiwan during the summer of 2018 and will participate in the upcoming CES 2019 with the new startups from Taiwan as well as accompany them every step of the way.

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First founded in the new startups base of Taipei during the summer of 2018, Taiwan Tech Arena (TTA) has introduced accelerator resources and startup funds from all over the world by playing the key role as a public spokesperson for new startups from Taiwan.

Dr. Lewis Chen, the Manager Director of TTA operations, said that the number of new startups from Taiwan gaining access to CES 2019 will not only grow in number but also in technology maturity and talent quality. Such outstanding achievement was supported by the fact that 8 new startups from Taiwan have received the annual CES Innovation Award this year; Managing Director Dr. Lewis Chen also pointed out that "these new startups have a clearer plan for their role positioning, and are more proficient in communicating with end users and international markets. I believe that the CES visitors this time will be deeply impressed and inspired by these new startups!" The task of the TTA is to introduce international resources and establish a sound ecological environment so that new startups from Taiwan are nourished with sufficient nutrients for better growth. TTA will also be a public media platform that raises global awareness of the real power of these new startups from Taiwan and the value that they are able to bring to the global startup circle.

So, what strength does Taiwan’s startups have? From the following eight teams that have already won the 2019 CES Innovation Award, you may be even more convinced to pay a visit to the 2019 CES exhibitions to learn more about these potential stars of tomorrow.

Smart Security Battery Hits the North American E-bike Market

As the market demand for e-bikes started to take off last year, Han-Win Technology, which started out with the Battery Management System (BMS), is actively expanding its core business to the light two-wheeled electric vehicles (including electric scooters and e-bikes). It is expected that Han-Win Technology will increase its visibility in the North American market by participating in CES, while contributing to global energy conservation and carbon reduction with its safe and efficient total solution.

Founded in 2015, Han-Win Technology is composed of a team of key technologies from the upstream IC design industry and the downstream battery packs of the BMS industry. After successfully building its BMS technology, Han-Win Technology has been actively engaged in the medium to large scale energy storage system and even electric vehicles (EV) market, providing high-qualicty battery module solutions based on its core BMS technology for various applications and system integration, such as light e-bikes, EV, electric gardening tools and electric power tools.

At CES 2019, Han-Win Technology's patented INNO-SAFETY technologies for e-Bike battery packs won the CES Innovation Award in the ‘Smart Energy’ category. Danny Lu, vice president of the marketing department of Han-Win Technology, pointed out that the "Super Smart Safety INNO-SAFETY Battery Pack" series introduces innovative patented technologies including “multi-stage soft start”, “external loop short-circuit pre-detection” and “extremely low static power consumption”, which dramatically inhibit inrush current while the power of the battery pack is turned on, while prevent shortening of the battery life due to excessive idle time.

Using the platform concept to design its BMS system, Han-Win Technology can quickly adjust to different serial strings of the battery according to customer needs, and widely support 4 to 20 strings of lithium battery applications. In addition to being selected for the CES Innovation Award, Lu said that his company has been working with several e-bike motor manufacturers, in an effort to providing customers with a safe, reliable and long-lasting lithium battery management solution.

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Super Smart Safety INNO-SAFETY Battery Pack and BMS System Targeting E-bike Applications

"Centimeter-level" Indoor Positioning System from 2D to 3D

According to statistics, 80% of human activities are carried out indoors. However, there is still currently no effective positioning technology available for this 80% of human activities, which causes us to always get lost in large shopping malls, passing by important exhibition information without knowing it, or making it especially difficult for factory warehouse operators to confirm the exact location of goods.

In order to solve this long-standing problem, STARWING Technology, jointly established by positioning and software industry experts, has developed an indoor positioning system that is said to be able to achieve a "centimeter level" with a unique artificial intelligence (AI) positioning analysis engine. Compared with the existing indoor positioning technology that has an error value of about 3-5 meters, the ultra-precision indoor positioning system developed by STARWING Technology using AOA positioning equipment has reached an error value of only 10-30 cm, which not only greatly improves the positioning accuracy tenfold, but also sets a new milestone for the 2D positioning to 3D vertical positioning.

In addition, STARWING Technology also introduced machine learning and an artificial neural network to the system so that an AI-level analytic engine was developed successfully, further providing historical trajectories, hot spot/cold spot distributions, abnormal behaviors, potential risks, friend maps, path predictions, and other analytic functions, so that this indoor positioning system not only helps the users "aim accurately", but also "see thoroughly"!

According to Ian Chen, CEO of STARWING Technology, this system helps to quickly locate the storage position of goods in a warehouse. In large shopping malls, users can navigate indoors by using their mobile phones. When visiting a museum or exhibition hall, an introduction of the product display will automatically pop up on the mobile APP as soon as users get close to the product display. Furthermore, Augmented Reality (AR) for entertainment interactions was also added to create a breakthrough in the limitations of traditional positioning technology.

Next, STARWING Technology expects to introduce this CES 2019 award-winning centimeter-level indoor positioning system at the exhibition venue in response to demand from high-end manufacturers, advanced medical systems, and newly-emerged retailers.

As STARWING Technology said, "if you want to know how indoor positioning changes the world, come and experience the centimeter-level indoor positioning system with AI analysis!”

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In combination with artificial intelligence, the centimeter-level indoor positioning system not only helps users "aim accurately", but also "see thoroughly"

Let the Doctor "See Through" the Lesion

Maybe you have seen surgeons in the movies or dramas locating the lesion accurately during the surgical operation and completed the surgery successfully no matter how difficult. However, when surgeons perform surgery at present, especially orthopedics, most surgeons still need to use endoscopes to minimize the wound or perform minimally invasive surgery even with superb technology, so that the patients are provided with the best recovery and the best quality of life after surgery. At present, the surgical field seen by the surgeon’s eyes is relatively limited. It is also necessary for the surgeon to look up at the screen display to see relevant information or find the location of the lesion when performing surgery, which is all very inconvenient for the surgeons.

In view of this, Taiwan Main Orthopaedics Biotechnology was founded with an aim to solve all the problems that surgeons may encounter during surgery and enable them to perform the most effective surgical procedures. With the experience that Founder Dr. Min-Liang Wang has accumulated in cooperation with IRCAD Taiwan and Show Chwan Memorial Hospital, a pair of smart eyeglasses specifically designed for surgical purposes was successfully developed. Li-Sheng Pan, International Business Specialist of Taiwan Main Orthopaedics Biotechnology explained that since the surgeons are staring at the monitor rather than the patient's affected area, the lack of coordination between the surgeon's eyes and hands makes the orthopedic surgery even more difficult. Therefore, after developing the first generation of smart eyeglasses in connection with Virtual Reality (VR), Taiwan Main Orthopaedics Biotechnology has produced Caduceus, the second generation smart surgical glasses, combined with Mixed Reality (MR).

The second-generation Caduceus products not only allow the surgeon to have the "eyes that see through" during surgery but also have added navigation functions so the surgeon no longer needs to look up at the screen display while performing surgery. It also helps the surgeon skip the lengthy medical navigation setup process to locate the target within 8 minutes before entering the actual surgery stage. Li-Sheng Pan emphasizes that Caduceus can provide the surgeon with the first perspective by directly and accurately overlaying 3D images, reducing the number of X-rays taken by patients and thereby reducing radiation damage. Furthermore, Taiwan Main Orthopaedics Biotechnology also solves the error caused by the distance between the eyeball and the smart eyeglass lens. Therefore, Caduceus smart glasses not only won the National Innovation Award, but also won the 2019 CES Innovation Award.

In the future, the Taiwan Main Orthopaedics Biotechnology plans to extend the applications from orthopedic surgery to spinal cord puncture, and even to soft tissue, organ surgery and other fields in order to enable surgeons to solve the problems they encounter during the surgical processes with the aid of the smart eyeglasses successfully developed by the company.

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Taiwan Main Orthopaedics Biotechnology enables the surgeon to have the "Perspective eye" during surgery.

Grasping Every Breath Precisely

Smart watches or smart bracelets sold on the market today mainly detect human physiological conditions such as pulse, moving distance, blood sugar, blood oxygen, etc. and view detailed measurement information through the mobile phone. However, there are currently no products sold on the market that can be connected to smart phones or mobile devices to transmit the measurement of respiratory conditions to the cloud platform. Most existing instruments for detecting respiration use traditional turbine technology that gives rise to many problems such as inertia, error, and environmental interference. Therefore, Genius Holdings has developed new pulmonary function testers based on its knowledge of medical devices accumulated in the field of medical development over many years.

Duncan Chen, co-founder and technical director of Genius Holdings, said the company's pulmonary function tester uses a new ultrasonic flow rate detection technology. The principle is to convert the gas flow rate into an ultrasonic signal through a specially designed Galton’s Whistle. With the Linux/Android architecture circuit combined with high-end audio chips and MEMS Microphones, statistics with the highest accuracy can be recorded. At present, all pulmonary function testers sold on the market can only record a flow rate of 100-300 units per second. By contrast, Genius Holdings' technology is capable of recording a flow rate of more than 10,000 units per second (i.e., flow rate resolution as high as 1/10,000 seconds).

It is worth noting that the ultrasonic flow rate and flow volume detection technology can present more physiological data of the user's respiratory tract as well as the benefits of high precision to the user. Therefore, Artificial Intelligence (AI) analysis can be performed with very sensitive values. Using an exclusive application, the trial subject will be able to know the results of the AI analysis system for the pulmonary function tests. For example, it can be accurately diagnosed whether the user has a respiratory disease such as asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, while the effect of the medication for patients can be better evaluated.

Thanks to the innovative features of this pulmonary function tester, it was awarded the 2019 CES "Sport, Fitness, and Biotech" Wearable Electronics Innovation Award. In the future, Genius Holdings will expand its business scope from the medical field to numerous other fields. For example, the development of the gas flowmeter can be applied to help predict the occurrent of a tornado at an earlier stage. It is also hoped that the anemometer, which will be launched in the first half of 2019, will help improve the overall efficiency of wind turbines to allow smooth green energy development in Taiwan.

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The pneumatic function tester can detect and analyze the user's respiratory condition through the mouthpiece.

OmniEyes:The omnipresent "Almighty eye"

Imagine that the current use of the Car DVR Camera is to record the situation when driving a vehicle and to access the content in case of an accident. In this way, many of the images recorded by the Car DVR Camera are mostly unused, resulting in waste. The main reason that OmniEyes was developed is to bring these seemingly useless but actually precious images into full play.

Chun-Ting Chou, associate professor of the Graduate Institute of Communication Engineering and Department of Electrical Engineering of National Taiwan University, explained that the Car DVR Camera that is currently installed in the car only functions to ensure driver’s safety but that there is still much information on the street and on the road that requires to be seen through the human eyes and brain. Therefore, the images recorded by the Car DVR Camera can be extended to many "unexpected" innovative applications through Artificial Intelligence (AI) analysis and further training of the camera, which is also the original intention when OmniEyes was developed. This innovative idea of effective use of images and the possibility of many innovative applications that extend beyond, gives OmniEyes the prestige of winning the 2019 CES Innovation Award.

Currently, OmniEyes has been installed in taxi fleets, buses, and logistic trucks. Ai-Chun Pang who is professor of department of Computer Science and Information Engineering of National Taiwan University,pointed out that these commercial vehicles or mass transit vehicles have incredibly large daily mileage with the recorded images containing streets and alleys. The source of the information is relatively real and large when compared to Google Street View. More importantly, OmniEyes' built-in artificial intelligence system has the intelligence of a 5-6 years old. In addition to identifying license plates, signboards, parking spaces, and other information, it can also train the camera to filter unnecessary information. It not only solves the problem of insufficient network bandwidth for uploading HD data but also reduces the pressure on the data center to continuously expand storage capacity.

CHUN-TING CHOU emphasizes that with the fog computing concept, the information collected by the camera will become increasingly useful. After cloud computing, the data will also become even more precise. By narrowing down this precise computation and then "teaching" the camera, the information obtained will become increasingly accurate. This virtuous cycle will ultimately make OmniEyes smarter. For example, OmniEyes can really see if there is a parking space, if the store you want to go to has a long que, if the store you want to go to is open, or even use the shooting motion of windscreen wipers to determine current weather conditions.

Not only that, but the OmniEyes R&D team is currently developing related applications. In addition to distinguishing between sun and rain, it is possible to judge whether it is raining heavily or lightly. This app will also provide a variety of real-time streetscapes for natural navigation.

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OmniEyes hopes to provide users with the most immediate and correct information at the right time.

Green Epidemic Control Derived from Electrochemistry

At the disaster relief site, how to minimize the secondary injury of the victims and protect relief workers from bacterial infection is an issue that Chien-Hung Chen CEO of ELECLEAN has contemplated from time to time while participating in many international disaster relief programs. In the disaster area, clean drinking water and thorough disinfection are both very important. However, clean bottled water that can be transported on site is very limited. Chemical disinfectants may also cause harm to the human body and local environment. Therefore, ELECLEAN uses electrochemistry technology not only to change dirty water into disinfected water but also to take into account environmental protection and sterilization effects.

Chien-Hung Chen said that there is an urgent need for instant production of disinfected water in disaster areas, underdeveloped countries or developed countries. ELECLEAN uses its rich experience in electrochemistry and water treatment technology to create the technology of water + electricity = reactive oxygen species. In other words, as long as electricity is added to the water, the water can be converted into a Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS). Compared with the products used in traditional disinfection applications, this product is non-chlorine based, requires no added chemicals, is effective for both viruses and bacteria, and is made of water, the cheapest raw material along with several advantages of portability, mobility, safety, effectiveness, cost-efficiency, and convenience.

According to functional water technology, forward-looking electrochemistry system, activation catalyst crystal spheres, and other key electrochemistry and new technology, ELECLEAN has currently developed prototypes such as wet tissue manufacturing machines, industrial water disinfecting machines, toilet flushing & deodorizing machines, humidifying atomizing & disinfecting machines, etc. Furthermore, the company is developing a wider range of derivative applications, such as air-conditioners, dishwashers, mopping robots, etc. that have anti-epidemic features, so customers are able to use all kinds of anti-epidemic products that are eco-friendly and safe wherever they go.

Chien-Hung Chen emphasizes that the corporate culture of ELECLEAN is positiveness, mindfulness, creativeness, and kindness. Under this concept, ELECLEAN have been successful in winning many awards in a very short period of time, including the Taiwan SNQ certification and silver award, German iF Product Design Award, Japanese Good Design Award, Taiwan Excellence Awards, Taiwan Golden Pin Design Award, etc., and the 2019 CES household appliance innovation award.

In the future, ELECLEAN hopes to become the world's top professional disinfection appliance brand and let the world see the power of innovative technology originally developed in Taiwan.

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ELECLEAN Green Anti-epidemic Products

Instant Water Quality Monitoring Solution to Improve Aquaculture Success Rates

Surrounded by sea, Taiwan is rich in seafood resources and world-famous for its aquaculture industry that provides hundreds of fish, shrimp, and shellfish species. However, factors such as the environment and water quality have a great impact on the aquaculture industry. When temperature changes cause the soil to change, it may also release toxins into the water that may cause sickness and death of the cultured fish, shrimp, and shellfish, and bring unpredictable losses to the business operators. Founded in 2017, Gintel Tech offers a solution that combines advanced sensing technologies, Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), which can monitor water quality, provide early warning, improve the success rate of breeding, and control the safety and health of the end consumers.

Gintel Tech CEO Chin-Yuan Hsieh explained that the self-developed sensing technology was applied to the company's water quality monitoring solution. Combined with artificial intelligence & Internet of Things (AIoT), algorithms, big data analysis, cloud technology, smart control, exclusive mathematical models, wireless communication and other factors, the solution can provide instant monitoring of water toxic concentrations and Vibrio in 1 minute, design customized safety warning ranges for water quality parameters, predict and give out warning signals upon detecting toxic concentrations/bacteria, report toxic concentration and main source of Vibrio, provide non-toxic solutions (such as using sucrose & potatoes to improve water quality in place of antibiotics that are harmful to human health), maintain high accuracy (at least 2 digits after the decimal point), use cloud server instrument calibration (no manual calibration required), monitor a wide variety of water quality parameters (including basic water quality parameters, water toxic concentrations and Vibrio) and many other competitive advantages. At present, the solution has been favored by customers in Southeast Asia and the company is also preparing to gain access to the European market.

Hsieh pointed out that since climate change and global warming have gradually reduced marine resources, artificial aquaculture has become the main source of supply for various fish, shrimps, and shellfish for the dining table; thus, ensuring the quality of aquaculture is critical to the safety and health of end consumers. In addition to aquaculture, Gintel Tech's water quality testing solutions can also be applied to other industries that have high demands for water quality testing, such as water quality testing for water dispensers.

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Gintel Tech's water quality monitoring solutions combines IoT and Cloud-Based Big Data Analytics to provide instant detection and early warning, improve the success rate of the aquaculture industry, and avoid the risks caused by severe weather changes.

Forget Your Keys or Lose Your Keys Again? Here is a solution for you…

Maybe you have experienced the time when you forgot your keys and locked yourself outside of your own house at the front door. Or you occasionally need to lend your keys to friends and relatives who suddenly drop by your house and you don’t know how to give your keys to them. So you choose to hide your keys under the doormat or flowerpot at the front door. Or you may even opt for fingerprint access control or password access control. However, the former is at high risk of robbery while the latter is too costly to be adopted. Founded in 2016, Lubn offers another option – a smart key box named LubnBox.

You can hang this box that looks like a big padlock on your doorknob to store your keys safely or ensure access by authorized users only. The user (homeowner) can unlock the key box remotely through the exclusive mobile app, provide authorization, and receive instant alerts when someone attempts to destroy the smart key box; Those who are authorized by the user do not need to install any additional application. Through the password given in the text message received by the mobile phone, they can open the smart key box to gain access to the house or even unlock any other doors.

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This is not a smart door lock but a smart key box that can be applied to all doors that require a key to open.

Therefore, in addition to helping people who have forgotten their key, LubnBox will also be useful for business operators of B&Bs/short-term housing rental, real estate brokers, property management, housekeeping, and so on. Without the need for complicated installation procedures, the smart key box can be used anywhere or reused. If you want to avoid the high costs of installing fingerprint access control or password access control, you can buy an alternative solution that will give you a key-less option at an online store. Well…just say goodbye to the old days of putting your keys under the doormat.

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