Innovations in Asia

Innovations in Asia

Asian countries are no longer just a place to get cheap labour or programming skills. Innovation is on the rise. Although Asian countries have been able to use cost advantages and software coding prowess to attract outsource business from around the world, the region is quickly moving up the value chain to challenge America's leadership innovation. The phrase "made in China", which has been a normality to the greater population, has now moved to "designed in China". Today, Asia's leading electronics exporting countries are aggressively pursuing strategies to establish themselves as new sources of innovation and global standards. Therefore, this arguably indicates that it is no longer possible to assume that innovations and global standards necessarily emerge first in a few global "centers of excellence", especially the U.S. Asian countries have demonstrated to the world that they have the knowledge, skills and abilities to develop advanced technologies, which in turn will attract foreign investment and strengthen their position towards the world.

These five articles are just a few examples of the many recent innovations within Asia, and shows Asia's commitment towards excellence and the top prize in every field.

1. Cars that brake down when you don't

November 14, 2005

Honda has created a vehicle and its new gadgetry to avoid any possible accidents on the road. The Advanced Safety Vehicle (ASV-3) uses satellite technology to calculate the optimum speed, and applies the brakes when needed. For example, if a vehicle is coming very close to hitting you, a 5.8 GHz radio signal informs the onboard computer which in turn alerts the driver, and simultaneously hits the brakes for you. "The ASV-3 offers the prospect of safer, more comfortable, and more worry-free driving", says Akihiro Kubo, Honda's executive chief engineer at the company's research and development center in Tochigi, just north of Tokyo.

Unfortunately, the technologies that are to be used in the ASV-3 are not yet in mass production, but it has alarmed many of the other automakers of the current trend in research into vehicle safety. Turning this prototype into reality will not be easy. Engineers do not expect this type of technology to be created into vehicles until 2010. The greatest issue facing this implementation is cost. A safety system like this would cost in the range of $4000-$5000, which consumers will not likely take into consideration since most consumers expect passive safety equipment like air bags to be standard, so such a high price tag will not be taken with any excitement.

2. Tanoc: Keeping the bad guys out

July, 2005

More so than the Americans, the Japanese public is more sensitized to the need for personal security, and a heightened quality of such technology and infrastructure is becoming a need. A start up company out of Asakusa, Tokyo, Tanoc Inc., has stepped up to the forefront of security systems and are producing high-quality video capture servers for use in the home and office. Over the past three years, Tanoc Inc. has become one of the fastest growing security equipment systems vendors in Japan.

Tanoc's technology is a key to the firm's success, they prove that seeing is believing. Tanoc has built systems that are able to manage and archive a very large number of cameras at the same time. Using an advanced variant of MP4, called AcroSecure, to store the video, it provides for a better image quality and compresses the video into smaller archives for greater storage capacities. This technology has entered into banks, hospitals, and campuses around Japan. By using server units to increase the power and storage, Tanoc is able to allow up to 7 months of continuous footage at 5 frames per second from 16 cameras to be stored without archiving.

Many may think that the greater public would rather purchase cheaper home systems than expensive ones, but customers don't want to hold back on the level and quality of security in their own homes and offices.

3. ATR innovates - The Pulse 1

Dec, 2004

The Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute (ATR) in Nara has yet again created a system that will break many language barriers. The Spoken Language Translation Research Laboratories at ATR have created a translating PDA. In their experiment, two individual, one Japanese and one native English speaker, each carried a PDA connected with earphones and microphones. As they conversed with eachother, each sentence that each speaker spoke was automatically converted into text form, translated and read out