Invention Asia|Vol 3|No 1|2017|ITEX 2017

MALAYSIA’S STEP INTO THE FUTURE

• Big data drives next-gen solutions • Internet of Things come to play in Cyberjaya • What’s in store at ITEX 2017

Vol 3 / No. 1 / April 2017 / RM10.60

ISSN 2289-9308

KDN No PP18559/08/2014/(033967)

POWERED BY

Invention Asia

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/ C O N T E N T S / NEWS 4 • Big data reveals more autism

related genes • Parkinson app uses deep learning in real-time monitoring

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• Baidu’s Deep Speech recognises

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English, Mandarin with single learning algorithm • Singapore relies on big data for greener transport

• More tools for Microsoft’s Azure • App uses image recognition to identify art • More funds for robotics and driverless cars in UK

FEATURE

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ITEX 2017: Inventing for a better world Mark your calendar for the biggest invention show in Asia.

10 Manipulating science of light

Multimedia University’s research arm finds niche in using photonics to detect radiation levels in the medical field.

12 Sensing the world in

• 21 billion IoT devices to ship by 2022 • Top ICT predictions in Asia Pacific

22 Cheaper, greener

new ways Promising advances in Photonic Crystal Fibre technology achieved in Universiti Malaya

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Every year at the exhibition, countless inventions are judged and awarded prizes in their respective categories. Here we have a look at last year’s winners.

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Malaysia is well placed to be the big data analytics hub of Southeast Asia.

18 Driving force behind

Malaysia’s digital economy MIMOS Bhd President and CEO Datuk Abdul Wahab Abdullah on the agency’s path ahead.

20 Making Asian cities smarter

Implementation of big data analytics can help solve urban woes.

Technology that powers driverless cars Tesla’s technology is driving automotive innovation with its network of autonomous cars.

Magic of magnetic levitation Maglev technology has long been giving the Hyperloop a run for its money.

30 Big data in fleet

management Analytic platforms will enable car companies, fleet owners and insurance firms to gain insights into their business.

Dato’ Vincent Lim, President of C.I.S Network Sdn Bhd SUPPORTED BY Asian Caucus of Invention Associations (ACIA) POWERED BY Invention, Innovation and Technology Exhibition Malaysia (ITEX) EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Academician Tan Sri Emeritus Professor Datuk Dr Omar Abdul Rahman EDITORIAL ADVISOR Academician Tan Sri Emeritus Professor, Datuk Dr Augustine Ong Soon Hock EXECUTIVE EDITOR V.S. Ganesan EDITOR Khaw Chia Hui EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Dr Leo Ann Mean, Academician Datuk Hong Lee Pee, Janice Gan, Dr Stephen Poon, V. S. Ganesan, Yuhanis Latif, Chrys Tee Invention Asia is produced by

HMS Harini Management Services Sdn Bhd (609031-W) W-9-12, Menara Melawangi, Amcorp Trade Centre, 18, Persiaran Barat, 46050 Petaling Jaya, Selangor.

Tel: 603-7932 3259 Email: harini.mservices@gmail.com PUBLISHER/CEO V.S. Ganesan CREATIVE ART DIRECTOR Goh Wei Lee ADVERTISING CONSULTANT Faridah Ismail

32 Fighting fires with data

Malaysian Invention And Design Society (MINDS) C-3A-10, 4th Floor, Block C, Damansara Intan, No. 1, Jalan SS20/27, 47400 Petaling Jaya, Selangor.

Tel: 603-7118 2062 Email: minds.invent@gmail.com Website: www.minds.com.my

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C.I.S Network Sdn Bhd 9-1-6, Jalan 3/109F, Danau Business Centre, Danau Desa Off Jalan Kelang Lama, 58100 Kuala Lumpur Malaysia.

Tel: 603-7982 4668 Email: info@cisnetwork.com

Big data analytics is helping scientists and first responders understand, fight and predict forest fires.

Designing for digital innovation: How design is embracing change and technology

36 Genius at work

16 Big data goes big in Malaysia

Quick loops around the block Long distance travel at hyper speed may be a reality within our lifetime.

26 Hands off the wheel:

14 Best inventions at ITEX 2016

connectivity alternative Recognising the high cost of implementing IoT, Atilze Digital works to deliver smart city solutions based on LoRa technology.

PUBLISHERS Academician Tan Sri Emeritus Professor Datuk Dr Augustine Ong Soon Hock, President of Malaysian Invention & Design Society (MINDS)

Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry and Physiology or Medicine recognise revolutionary discoveries that will advance our understanding of the world around us.

Printing United Mission Press Sdn Bhd (755329-X) No. 25 & 27, Jalan PBS 14/14, Taman Perindustrian Bukit Serdang, Seri Kembangan, 43300 Selangor.

Tel: 603-8941 6618 Fax: 603-8945 5168

38 Spider – the hybrid airship’s

best friend Meet Lockheed Martin’s one-ofa-kind robot that is committed to protecting the cargo-hauling ship of the skies.

All authors automatically agree to indemnify C.I.S Network Sdn Bhd, MINDS and Harini Management Services Sdn Bhd against any loss, costs, expenses (including legal fees), damages and liabilities that might arise from their own incapacity, negligence, breach of contract or other civil misdeeds. We reserve the right to edit all articles. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2017 by C.I.S Network Sdn Bhd and Harini Management Services Sdn Bhd. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without prior written permission from the publisher. The views expressed in the articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of C.I.S Network Sdn Bhd, MINDS and Harini Management Services Sdn Bhd. C.I.S Network Sdn Bhd, MINDS and Harini Management Services Sdn Bhd accept no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts, photography, illustration and other editorial materials.

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FROM THE

EDITORS’ BOARD

Dear readers, Welcome to the new issue of Invention Asia.

The current issue, as in previous issues, carries news of the invention communities and events in our region. We feature local and international innovative companies and new innovative products in the marketplace. In addition, there are articles on big data and IoT (Internet of Things), the acclaimed main drivers of the digital economy.

The big news in the digital world is of course big data. Data is generated every time we use our computers and mobile devices.

Furthermore, it has been said that by 2020, around 20 billion devices will be connected to the Internet through IoT. The capture and analysis of this massive amount of data generated everyday have resulted in the development of two new areas of study – data science and data analytics. And the opportunities for business from data-driven innovation is tremendous. An example, fighting fires with big data, is featured this issue.

Articles related to big data and IoT and the how Malaysia is dealing with these topics, especially within MIMOS, are special features in this issue. We also feature a Malaysian company – ATilZe Sdn Bhd – that is employing big data, connectivity and IoT to develop applications for the smart city concept.

Another special feature covered in the current issue is new development in the transportation sector – the Hyperloop, Maglev and self-driving cars. There is also a write-up about the sciences behind the 2016 Nobel Prizes in chemistry, physics and medicine/ physiology.

In our last issue we featured an article on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement that Malaysia had agreed to be part of. The article dwelled on the chapter on intellectual property and discussed Malaysia’s capacity, status and readiness in this multi-faceted and complex business and technology aspects of international trade.

Now the TPP is as good as dead, as America’s new President has pulled the US out of the partnership. However the issues raised related to intellectual property are still relevant to Malaysia.

The question, “Is Malaysia innovation ready?”, is still pertinent and must be rigorously examined; strength and weaknesses in our innovation capacity must be identified and any shortfall rectified, if we are to be competitive in global trade.

MOTHER NATURE: THE BEST INVENTOR AND INNOVATOR The enormous multiplicity of life forms

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on earth developed through evolution, mutation and adaptation; in short invention and innovation. This is common knowledge.

So why do I bring this up in this column?

I was fascinated by a house plant with unusual flowers in the home of Ib and Lillian Larsen near Copenhagen in Denmark.

Neither the Larsens nor anyone else knew the name of the plant.

On showing the picture of the flowers to colleagues in the Academy of Sciences Malaysia, the plant was identified as Ceropegia sandersonii, native to Mozambique, South Africa and Swaziland.

Because of the shape of the flowers, the plant’s common name is the umbrella or parachute plant.

The interesting feature of this plant is not just the strange looking flowers, but its unique mode of attracting and trapping insects, not for food as in carnivorous plants but for pollination purpose.

Studies carried out in the University of Salzburg, showed that the flowers emit special chemicals, previously unknown in plants, that are exactly the same produced by injured bees.

In the natural environment, these chemicals attract flies of the genus Desmometopa which have special liking for vital fluids leaking out of injured bees. Flies that enter the parachute flower, seduced by the special chemicals mimicking the scent of injured bees, fall into a pit of pollen and cannot escape until the flower begins to wilt, by which time they are thoroughly covered in pollen.

This, just like many other anatomical and physiological uniqueness in plants and animals in nature, is innovation par excellence.

I hope readers will enjoy the May issue of Invention Asia.

I am looking forward to comments from you all.

Where Invention Thrives, the Economy Flourishes

TAN SRI OMAR ABDUL RAHMAN, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF tansriomar@gmail.com

Invention and innovation should be encouraged among the youth in Asia and more so as the region progresses.

A good platform is to base on advanced science, technology and engineering. Thus, Asian inventors should keep up with the development of science. In this context, MINDS is planning a Nobel Forum where senior fellows of the Academy of Sciences will present the advances made by Nobel Laureates in Chemistry, Physics and Medicine to the young researchers in August. A proposed focus area is the tropical sites in Asia that are endowed with abundant rain and sunshine. Opportunity exists to mitigate poverty through commercial activities based on science-based innovations.

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There are many compelling reasons for STEM education.

STEM education helps developing analytical capacity and capability, strengthening logical thinking skill and enhancing the power of imagination.

These three skills are important attributes to a success in business or career, either in science or non-science fields. More importantly, these three skills are essential characteristics of a creator, inventor and an innovator.

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DR STEPHEN POON

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One sure way for an inventor to gauge how good his invention is, is by participating in competitions where the work will be appraised by qualified professionals. How are inventions judged? What are the criteria for judging if an invention deserves a gold medal or a special award? Some of the common criteria are the degree of inventiveness, its practicality and utility, its potential for commercialisation, the impact it will have on society, and how environmentally friendly the invention is.

Presentation is also a criterion as it is important that the inventor be able to explain clearly what his invention is about, how it is something novel and how it contributes to the betterment of society.

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V.S. GANESAN

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Innovations are born of out necessity. The necessity to improve lives of mankind. As we speed along our research, inventions and technology, it is important to keep in mind how can we leverage on the existing commercialisation platforms, domestic and abroad.

Bringing your work to the masses is important, it is so that the public can reap the benefit of your inventions, ensuring it will not languish in the dark.

Design seems intuitive. It has been normal until relatively to use language and concepts from cognitive design of problem solving behaviour. However, it has become clear that designing is not normal “problem solving”.

We need to establish appropriate concepts for the discussion of intuition in design. Designing involves finding appropriate problems, as well as solving them, and includes substantial activity in problem structuring and formulating, rather than merely accepting the problem as given. How is this relevant to design? As shapers of human experience, we manipulate chaos into order. Strategies become packaging. Services become environments. We take what is unappealing and disorganised and reframe it into order and delight.

Regardless whether the design process is accepted as credible, a good designer must become fluent in the language and practices of the world of innovation.

When this happens, designers will be able to make intuitive, informed decisions that yield tremendous results. Take heart, designers!

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DATO’ VINCENT LIM

DR LEO ANN MEAN

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DATUK HONG LEE PEE

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TAN SRI AUGUSTINE ONG

It is commendable to see Malaysia embracing the latest in big data analytics and Internet of Things, in a huge way. In this issue, we spoke to people who are pushing forward these initiatives and get to know the challenges they face. I, for one, cannot wait to live in a future with super fast trains, smart cities and self-driving cars.

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NEWS Invention Asia offers a snapshot of the latest invention news around the world.

Drop us an email at minds.invent@gmail.com if you would like us to feature your invention.

APP USES DEEP LEARNING IN REAL-TIME MONITORING

BIG DATA REVEALS MORE AUTISM RELATED GENES Researchers at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada have isolated 18 new genes believed to increase risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder. The results will help to pave the way for earlier diagnosis and future treatments.

The study was recently published in Nature Neuroscience. It outlined a technique called whole genome sequencing to map the genomes of 5,193 people with ASD. The sequencing looked beyond traditional analyses that shed light at the roughly 1% of DNA that makes up our genes to take in the remaining “noncoding” or “junk” DNA once thought to have little biological function.

Led by Ryan Yuen, the team used a cloud-based big data approach to link genetic variations with participants’ clinical data.

The study also found increased variations in the noncoding DNA of people with ASD, including so-called “copy number variations” where stretches of DNA are repeated. The finding highlighted the promise of big data to link fine-grained genetic changes with real world illness.

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A smartphone app that uses deep learning lets people with Parkinson’s disease test their symptoms in four minutes.

“There’s very little understanding as to how the disease arises, and patients say that every day the condition is different,” said George Roussos at Birkbeck, University of London.

People report symptom changes related to everything from exercise to socialising to diet, but it’s not yet possible to build a solid picture of how these factors interact.

“To understand these differences, we need to monitor the condition regularly, in a quick and easy way, over a long period of time,” says Roussos.

With their Android app, called CloudUPDRS, Roussos and his colleagues want to make it easier to track symptoms and flag potential problems earlier. Similar to how a clinician would conduct a Parkinson’s severity test, the app includes both selfassessment questions and physical tests using a smartphone’s sensors.

For example, one test measures tremors by asking the user to hold the phone flat in their hand. Another measures gait by getting the user to walk 5m in a straight line and back with the phone in their pocket.

The first version of the app directly mimicked the role of a clinician, so the assessment took around 25 minutes. Later the added deep learning feature in subsequent versions of the app can distinguish between good data, like a measurement of tremors, and bad data, like the smartphone being knocked.

Having been trained to recognise these differences using data labelled by experts, the system discards bad data with an accuracy of 92.5 per cent.

A clinical trial is now under way using the latest version of the app, which is certified as a medical device by the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.

Since October, 60 people with Parkinson’s have been using the app to assess their symptoms every two hours. Five clinicians have been performing assessments on the same people every two weeks for comparison.

21 BILLION IOT DEVICES TO SHIP BY 2022 IoT faces new computing challenges, notably with deployment and scaling, and its future will rely in part on using embedded Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOS), which support many IoT application features, such as small size, constrained processing resources, low power consumption, limited maintenance, and real-time computing.

ABI Research forecasts 21 billion IoT devices will ship with embedded RTOS by 2022.

“The tremendous expansion of the IoT revived the embedded RTOS market, with open source platforms springing up rapidly to jostle long-established proprietary players,” says Michela Menting, research director at ABI Research.

“While industrial demand for RTOS has a decade-long history, the development of new IoT applications in other segments, such as consumer, digital home, connected

car, and smart cities, jolted demand for embedded RTOS.” Supported by greater MCU capabilities and lowering price points, the embedded RTOS market is expanding rapidly.

“Many open source operating systems popular with the IoT are increasingly adding real-time capabilities to compete in this lucrative market. Currently, the embedded RTOS market is highly fragmented, with hundreds of different platforms available.

“Although, developers will need to tackle issues of interoperability and standardisation to realise its full potential.”

TOP ICT PREDICTIONS IN ASIA PACIFIC In the increasingly digital world, new and emerging innovations are set to disrupt the way people live, work and play. According to youth across the Asia Pacific region, the most exciting technologies expected to have the largest impact on their future lives will be artificial intelligence, virtual/ mixed/augmented reality, and Internet of Things, based on survey findings released today by Microsoft.

In the Microsoft Asia Digital Future Survey, 1,400 youth were polled across 14 markets across the Asia Pacific region, comprising Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand,

Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

Artificial intelligence is ranked as the top technology that youth expect to have the biggest impact on their lives. In recent years, the confluence of power devices, cloud and data has enabled bold visions on how AI can be an integrated part of our digital future.

According to the survey, these are the three scenarios that youth anticipate that the biggest improvement to their lives from AI: 1. Connected or driverless cars (39%) 2. Software robots that improve productivity (36%) 3. Robots as social companions (19%)

The second-ranked technology that youth are excited about is virtual/mixed/ augmented reality.

The third-ranked technology that youth are most excited about is the Internet of Things.

Six in 10 youth feel their country is not ready to adapt to digital disruptions. To address this, they feel a top priority is to ensure schools prepare students with the right skills to fully leverage future innovations (30%); followed by creating conducive business environments to encourage start-ups (29%), and making technology accessible to all citizens (24%).

The survey also revealed some of the concerns held by youth around the increasingly digital world. Among their top three concerns are: 1. Security and privacy (28%) 2. Relationships becoming too impersonal (27%) 3. Potential loss of jobs (26%) According to the survey, youth feel strongly that public-private partnerships (37%) are needed to drive innovations, ahead of the public sector or the government going at it alone (29%); technology start ups (18%); and the private sector (15%).

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NEWS SINGAPORE RELIES ON BIG DATA FOR GREENER TRANSPORT

BAIDU’S DEEP SPEECH RECOGNISES ENGLISH, MANDARIN WITH SINGLE LEARNING ALGORITHM Baidu Research unveiled new research results from its Silicon Valley AI Lab. Results include the ability to accurately recognize both English and Mandarin with a single learning algorithm.

The Deep Speech system, announced in 2015, initially focused on improving English speech recognition accuracy in noisy environments.

Over the past year, researchers trained it to transcribe Mandarin. The Mandarin version achieves high accuracy in many scenarios and is ready to be deployed on a large scale in realworld applications, such as web searches on mobile devices.

Dr. Andrew Ng, chief scientist at Baidu, said: “AI Lab has demonstrated that our end-to-end deep learning approach can be used to recognise very different languages. Key to our approach is our use of high-performance computing techniques, which resulted in a 7x speedup compared to last year at this time. Because of this efficiency, experiments that previously took weeks now run in days. This enables us to iterate more quickly.”

It is also reported that Deep Speech is learning to process English spoken in various accents from around the world.

Currently, such processing is challenging for popular speech systems used by mobile devices.

Deep Speech has made rapid improvement on a range of English accents, including Indian-accented English as well as accents from countries in Europe where English is not the first language.

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The island nation’s second minister for transport Ng Chee Meng says big data and analytics will be used to iprove train reliability and help public bus operators to track the location of their buses, reported the Business Times.

“In time to come, we will be able to integrate private transport data as well.

Using Global Navigation Satellite System technology and through the in-vehicle units installed in all vehicles in Singapore, we will get aggregated, comprehensive and realtime data on road traffic.

The data is procured from various sources such as fare cards, Wi-Fi and CCTV systems, and cellular data.

“This information will also help the Land Transport Authority develop a more accurate picture of the real-time traffic situation and intervene where necessary, such as by adjusting traffic light timings and providing traffic light priority for buses.”

He also painted a picture of having less need to own cars and reclaiming road and carpark spaces for community and greenery uses – and ultimately “improving the quality of life for all”.

Ng said self-driving vehicles are a focus for the government. Singapore could very well have a fleet of shared self-driving pods or shuttles that can be called on demand to ferry commuters to and fro MRT stations.

Meanwhile, self-driving buses could address the problem of driver shortage.

MORE FUNDS FOR ROBOTICS AND DRIVERLESS CARS IN UK The UK government recently announced extra funding for technologies, including robotics and driverless cars as part of the year’s budget.

Chancellor Philip Hammond announced plans to “enhance the UK’s position as a world leader in science and innovation” by allocating £270 million (RM1.46 billion) to support research into “biotech, robotic systems and driverless vehicles”.

Driverless vehicle trials have already begun in several locations around the UK, including Milton Keynes and Greenwich in London.

Hammond said £16 million will be used to create a hub for running trials into 5G connectivity, while £200 million will be invested to fund local projects testing ways of accelerating the rollout of full fibre broadband across the UK. The sums, however, are smaller than those announced by some other countries. For example, the US Department of Transportation proposed a 10-year plan to invest £3.3 billion in self-driving cars under President Barack Obama.

MORE TOOLS FOR MICROSOFT’S AZURE

APP USES IMAGE RECOGNITION TO IDENTIFY ART Smartify uses image recognition to identify scanned artworks and provide people with additional information about them. Users can add the works to their own digital collection.

The app’s co-founder Thanos Kokkiniotis said it is a combination of the music discovery service Spotify and music recognition app Shazam – but for visual works.

The app was launched last in May for selected artworks at the Louvre in Paris, France, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and all the artworks at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Wallace Collection in London.

Creating an app that can recognise individual paintings is relatively easy because most galleries already have digitised versions of their collections, says Kokkiniotis.

The challenging part is getting galleries to allow Smartify to access this information and matching up what’s seen through the camera with the database of digitised artworks.

Microsoft just added two big data and visualisation tools to the company’s Azure Government cloud platform.

Tom Keane, Microsoft Azure general manager, wrote in a blog post that the HDInsight and Power BI offerings are designed to help government agencies manage, analyse and visualise huge quantities of data in the platform.

He said HDInsight works to help users build data and machine learning applications that operate on Apache Spark and Hadoop.

The cloud offering is also designed to deploy a big data analysis cluster in minutes; support real time streaming and processing of large data sets; and build machine learning and intelligent applications.

Power BI works to support data aggregation and visualisation through live dashboards and interactive reports.

Keane added that Power BI is designed to provide users a single view of critical data; intuitive report authoring; and a 360-degree view of organisation data on mobile devices.

Azure Government now also includes cognitive services such as audio and text translation as well as facial and emotion recognition, Keane said.

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ITEX 2017

F E A T U R E

INVENTING FOR A BETTER WORLD

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sia’s largest invention platform, the International Invention, Innovation & Technology Exhibition (ITEX) returns in 2017 from May 11 to 13 at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre.

This flagship event is set to showcase the best invention and innovative pieces from more than 20 countries cumulatively. As an annual affair organised by the Malaysian Invention & Design Society (MINDS), it will be presenting a stellar line up of 1,000 products by local and international inventors.

This year, just like any other year before this, MINDS and event manager C.I.S Network Sdn Bhd have invested tremendous resources into ITEX 2017 to further raise the bar in running a world-class event.

Innovation is the single most crucial tool in obtaining new competitive advantages. This is why every year, the brightest minds and visionaries from around the world gather at ITEX. These are the ones who have widely recognised innovation as a key ingredient of productivity success.

Geared with enthusiasm and avidity, the theme that drives discussion among participants this year is “Inventing For A Better World.”

President of C.I.S Network, Dato’ Vincent Lim said besides providing an effective platform for commercialisation, the theme is also a testament to both MINDS and C.I.S Network’s commitment to groom the younger generation.

“At ITEX, we are firm believers in promoting the innovative spirit

through education. Hence, we welcome the debut of the World Young Inventors Exhibition (WYIE) this year. It’s designed to expose young students to the real world as well as encourage potential innovators to start young,” he said.

None of these, of course, would have been possible without the pivotal role that MINDS has played.

The society led by Academician Tan Sri Emeritus Prof Datuk Dr Augustine S.H. Ong has been an important catalyst in initiating stimulating engagements between academic institutions, industries and the private sector to promote creativity.

He has projected his continuous

Mark your calendar for the biggest invention show in Asia.

vision of achieving high standards in invention and design in ITEX for almost three decades now. MINDS is confident that ITEX will provide greater insight on creativity and innovation.

MINDS’ perpetual support towards the country’s long term agenda will also see the Arts and Creativity Exhibition (ACE) returning for the third time. It seeks to actively encourage creative imagination, both in writing and in drawing and to improve English language skills.

ITEX Startups Showcase: Lending Support To The National Agenda As many economies are placing their bets on the next big thing in technology, ITEX is paying tribute to the great forces that are bringing about groundbreaking advancements: the small and medium enterprises.

The big boys of the business world soak up the media’s attention but ITEX believes that the small and medium sized businesses are a crucial part of any economy. The announcement of Digital Free Trade Zone (DFTZ) by Prime Minister Dato’ Sri Najib Razak on March 22 is a clear indication of just how much Malaysia values the contribution of our SMEs. DFTZ will further drive up healthy competition among SMEs as it lays the right foundation to promote the making of a level playing field.

Dato’ Vincent says ITEX is resolute in aligning itself with the national agenda of Malaysia with the introduction of Startups Showcase.

“Startups Showcase, the new exhibition category in ITEX, is in line with MOSTI’s effort to promote startups. In a knowledge-based society, innovation among SMEs is the driving force of the economy, on all levels and in all types of organisations.

“We must acknowledge the contributions of the startup entrepreneurship.

Such ambitions create new jobs and subsequently brings competitive dynamics into the business environment.”

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MANIPULATING SCIENCE OF LIGHT Multimedia University’s research arm finds niche in using photonics to detect radiation levels in the medical field.

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ewly appointed Vice-President of Research and Development at Multimedia University in Cyberjaya, Prof Dr Ir Hairul Azhar Abdul Rashid is overseeing the thrust in commercialisation of his team’s radiation dosimetry device, which is an application of photonics.

The project, a result of his focus on the study of photonics, will be showcased at ITEX 2017 from May 11 to 13 at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre. The team recently received a grant from the Cradle Fund to produce a prototype by this year-end.

The genesis of the project comes from the limited measurement of the absorbed dose delivered in radiotherapy for cancer patients.

“Traditionally, the oncologist will make an assessment to decides on the radiation dose needed by the patient and how much surface area to cover. Too high a dose, the healthy cells will be killed while if the dose is too low, the treatment will not be effective.

“The limitation is the ionisation chamber. Now the smallest area radiotherapy can cover is about 10cm by 10cm. Any smaller and the ionisation chamber will be unable to accommodate, being bulky and cumbersome itself.

“However, now in the medical field, oncologists are looking to deliver more precise radiotherapy for patients. Our radiation dosimetry device allows them to just target an area of about 2cm by 2cm,” Prof Hairul explained.

The initial stage of the project was a collaboration between Dr David Bradley, Professor of Radiation and Medical Physics at University of Surrey, Universiti Malaya’s

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“To produce a medical device, we have to ensure that the measurement is down to the very last digit whereas in factory settings, typically the industry do not require the same sensitivity as the medical sector.” ~ Prof Hairul

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photonic research team headed by Prof Dr Faisal Rafiq Mahamd Adikan, Higher Education Ministry and Prof Hairul.

MMU’s Engineering Faculty still supplies the preform to UM to draw the fibre optics via its facility.

Prof Hairul’s dosimetry device will be able to accurately measure the radiation dose absorbed by the cancer patients undergoing radiotherapy. To facilitate the commercialisation of the product, he has co-founded Lumisyns Sdn Bhd, one of two companies under his name.

Lumisyns will be responsible in ensuring the prototype is ready and submitting it to the Medical Device Authority under the Health Ministry for accreditation. They are also looking to expand the dosimetry device to nuclear-related industries.

“To produce a medical device, we have to ensure that the measurement is down to the very last digit whereas in factory settings, typically the industry do not require the same sensitivity as the medical sector.

“So far we are working with Malaysian

Nuclear Agency to further explore industrial uses. Because the fibre optics are very fine, we can look into ways of creating devices of various sizes,” said Prof Hairul.

His other company, Optodyne Technology Sdn Bhd, is involved in fabrication and consulting work related to specialty fibre optics.

Meanwhile in his new responsibility, he oversees MMU’s R&D Division which guides the academic staff and students on bringing their projects and visions to life.

So far, there are 27 groups made up of both students and staff on the startup scheme, and 15 spin-off companies in the incubation and grooming stage, with the aim of moving the products to market. There are also four spin-offs helmed by the academic staff.

Within the division, lies the Entrepreneur Development Centre, where the university works with the Finance Ministry, MaGIC and more to sharpen entrepreneurial skills among the students.

To further encourage research, the division has a replication of a digital

home centre, where students can test their prototypes and so on. The university recently established a Data Science Institute, marking a serious foray into big data analytics.

As for Prof Hairul, he sees research and commercialisation being in a balance.

“I’m fortunate enough to have both academic and research backgrounds and several international stints at places such as Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies in New Jersey. These experiences have allowed me to see the need for commercialisation to be in tandem with academic research.

“We have come up with an R&D roadmap where we have pinpointed high impact areas to excel in, maximise research potential and getting more researchers involved.”

When asked about the road to commercialisation, he shared that for a young researcher to finally have his own spin-off company, it typically takes about five years, sometimes even longer.

“The key is engagement. We should not be stuck in our own academic bubble.” u

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SENSING THE WORLD IN NEW WAYS Promising advances in Photonic Crystal Fibre technology achieved in Universiti Malaya.

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niversiti Malaya made the news recently, placing 23rd in the world for the subject of Electrical and Electronic Engineering under the QS World University Rankings. This is no small feat, but may have been no surprise to those who are actively involved in research there.

The Electrical Engineering Department is currently carrying out cutting edge research on various advanced technologies. It is especially noted for its progress on a newly developed type of fibre-optic cable, which is Photonic Crystal Fibres (PCF).

PCF is developed based on the properties of photonic crystals.

Photonic crystals are made by drilling millions of tiny, closely spaced holes onto transparent material, through microchip-fabrication methods.

A magnification of the PCF.

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The orientation, size and spacing of these holes can cause the material to exhibit quite extraordinary properties.

For example, PCF is unique for its ability to confine light in hollow cores, which is not possible in conventional optical fibres. Because of this special characteristic, PCFs

can be applied to areas such as fibreoptic communication, fibre lasers, high-power transmission and highly sensitive sensors.

The lead researcher on photonics at the Department of Electrical Engineering is Prof Dr Faisal Rafiq Bin Mahamd Adikan. Prof Faisal is extremely well-regarded in his field.

Universiti Malaya’s fibre drawing machine.

One of his papers won Best Paper for the Photonic Category during an international conference in 2003, and his previous research on corrosion sensing appeared in the March 2013 issue of Optics and Photonics News, a highly respected international technical magazine. He also serves as a reviewer for the IEEE Photonics Journal and other reputable journals in the field.

His research group has formed a startup company called Flexilicate Sdn Bhd in 2015. As the only university in Malaysia that has a fibre drawing facility, it is able to custom design and fabricate optical fibres like PCF for sensing applications. Through the company, the research team’s findings will have a shot at commercialisation.

Developing high-end sensors is in fact Flexilicate’s cup of tea. One of the company’s most recent projects was installing highly sensitive PCF sensors in the newest and most modern building in the university, the Faculty of Economics and Business’ Bangunan Azman Hashim.

With the help of structural engineers, the team identified stress points in the building’s walls at the design phase. PCF sensors were then embedded at these stress points during construction, so that information regarding the strength and integrity of the building can be continually monitored. If any cracks or weaknesses are detected, engineers can be immediately alerted.

Such sensors can also be installed in bridges, roads and other structures to help monitor the structures and avoid any untoward incidents. In fact the team had carried out a pilot test at a bridge in Malacca town.

Beyond buildings, Flexilicate’s sensor technology is also finding applications in the field of medicine.

Sensors to immediately detect cases of dengue, the mosquito-borne disease which is one of Malaysia’s most serious health problems, are in the works.

In collaboration with the University of Ottawa, Canada, Flexilicate has developed a biosensor based on surface plasmon to speed up the detection of the dengue virus in blood.

Once perfected, this will cut down detection time from the current week-long laboratory analysis to just 30 minutes. Integrated into a hand-held device, the biosensor would enable medical practitioners to detect dengue at the patient’s bedside.

Both applications are bound to be in high demand. The market for biosensors is currently estimated at US$12 billion a year, while photonic crystals itself are a US$34 billion dollar per year industry.

With such important and practical innovations such as this, Flexilicate was a shoo-in in for the University Startup of the Year category at the Rice Bowl Startup Awards, which they won in 2015.

The ASEAN awards are a first of its kind that celebrate rising startups which harness technology to redefine business strategies.

Prof Faisal’s PCF project is funded by the Education Ministry under its five-year High Impact Research initiative commitment.

With such solid backing, the sky is the limit for PCF technology and application.

PCF’s light-confining ability

Flexilicate wins the Universiry Startup of the Year from Rice Bowl Awards.

is in fact currently one of the most promising technologies that can be used to bend light around objects.

Among the unique properties of PCF is negative refraction, in which light is bent in a direction opposite to its normal path.

PCF is used to make light beams diverge gradually as it travels towards the centre of the object, then bend around the object and re-form as another beam on the opposite side.

This was the almost exact theory that was used in the James Bond movie Die Another Day to explain how an Aston Martin Vanquish can “vanish” into thin air.

Indeed, some scientists in other parts of the world have already been able to use PCF technology to render small objects invisible. With Prof Faisal at the helm, Flexilicate may well be the first Malaysian team to do this soon. u

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BEST INVENTIONS AT Every year at the exhibition, countless inventions are judged and awarded prizes in their respective categories. Here we have a look at last year’s winners.

by Dr Leo Ann Mean

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he International Invention, Innovation and Technology Exhibition (ITEX) is Malaysia’s first invention exhibition organised by the Malaysian Invention and Design Society (MINDS).

What started out as MINDEX (Malaysian Invention and Design Exhibition) in 1989 went on to include international participants and inventions over the years.

While the technical field of the inventions are divided into 23 categories, the best awards given to exhibitors, are categorised into six – universities/educational institutions, corporate, overseas, research institutions, individual and green invention.

RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS Dr Meilina Ong Abdullah and team from the Malaysian Palm Oil Board won the Research Institutions best invention award with their SureSawit karma – A Diagnostic Assay for Oil Palm Clonal Conformity.

This technology could detect abnormalities in palm oil fruits well before they develop. The inventors were able to identify the part of the genome that causes the abnormalities by testing the leaves of the young plants.

INDIVIDUAL Matrix DSLRS Control Suite invented by Bongkam Phayakvichien and Boochai Wongbawornkiat from Thailand was judged as the best invention in the Individual category with their product named DSLRS Suite.

The inventors who created DSLRS Suite are professionals in multimedia and event solutions. They believe it is the best system for bullet time (time slice) technique in filming events, and for sports and animation services.

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ITEX 2016 OVERSEAS The winning invention in the Overseas category is the sunscreen powder and antiageing mask invented by Lin Chien-Yih and team from Asia University, Taiwan.

From environmentally controlled production of mushrooms, polysaccharide is extracted and through modified comparison the sunscreen powder and mask are made.

CORPORATE Mahmood Safaei and Fahimeh Malekinezhad from Smart Environmental Solutions Sdn Bhd won the best award in the Corporate category with their Smart Weather Pollution Evaluation device.

It measures the air pollution within unique and evolutionary hardware and software designs. It is able to accurately provide the current air pollution indices while the finish price is much lower than the competition.

It comes in three versions – home, portable and city.

GREEN INVENTION UNIVERSITIES/EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS Recyclate Photoresists Plastic (RE-PLAS) invented by Assoc Prof Anika Zafiah Md Rus and team from Universiti Tun Hussein Onn won the Best Invention award amongst the universities and educational institutions that participated in ITEX 2016.

According to the inventors, the recovery process of waste fibres or waste polypropylene diapers involved specific manufacturing control for industrial uptake. This comprises pulverisation of fibres and compounding the pellets until profile extrusions are attained. The REPLAS is designed to solve the need in the building of affordable shelters.

For the Green Invention category the top prize went to Electricity Generation from the Resulting Winds of Passing Trains developed by Alvin Yap Chee Wei and team from Malaysia’s Asia Pacific University of Technology & Innovation.

This invention converts free wind energy into electricity for the use by railw ay stations. The device is a vertical axial wind turbine that catches the wind and converts it into electricity. The team is currently experimenting the device with the co-operation of KLIA Express.

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DATA GOES BIG IN MALAYSIA Malaysia Malaysia isis well well placed placed to to be be the the big big data analytics hub of Southeast Asia. data analytics hub of Southeast Asia

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very single thing that we do on our computer and mobile devices generates data. Our hyper-connected, globalised society generates massive amounts of data every day – 2.5 exabytes of data to be exact. To put that into context, that’s 2.5 billion gigabytes. This is Big Data – huge data sets that are beyond the ability of commonly used software tools to capture, manage and process with reasonable speed.

However, the ability to capture, manage, and process this huge amount of data unlocks a wealth of information that can be used in a plethora of useful ways.

For example, Big Data is already being used to predict sporting events and election outcomes, improve traffic flows, and even detect and prevent epidemics. Companies can also use information from Big Data to develop new products, personalise advertising and purchasing recommendations, analyse business risks and gain insights into consumer preferences.

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Alongside cloud computing, social media and mobile, Big Data is one of the “big four” technologies that are currently avidly being adopted by companies around the world. Indeed, a majority of companies nowadays view these technologies as strategically important for their current and future success.

However, companies in certain countries have been quicker to adapt than others. The IBM Business Tech Trends reveals some interesting numbers.

Among 13 countries surveyed, the US and India lead the pack in terms of percentage of companies deploying Big Data as part of their operational analytics. The US stands out as home to the top four Big Data companies in the world – Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft.

The US and India are followed closely behind by China, France, Italy and Brazil. Interestingly, Germany and Japan, countries that are traditionally regarded as tech heavyweights, are surprisingly lagging behind in Big Data adoption.

One needs to have a very particular set of skills to qualify as a Big Data scientist or analyst.

Surprisingly, even though it does not figure in the top five adopters, Spain has the smallest skill gap in Big Data analytics. This means that Spain is the best equipped with Big Data professionals to meet its analytical needs. This is followed by Mexico, India and China, and only then by the US. The Asian region has been relatively slow in adopting Big Data technology. A survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit found that even though many Asian senior level executives acknowledge that Big Data will be essential for strategic business decisions in the future, they are still sceptical about the applicability of Big Data in the region.

Relatively underdeveloped data regulations among Asian countries have raised questions about whether Big Data will compromise data privacy, protection, control, compliance and security. Furthermore, the uneven

communications infrastructure around Asia means that large areas of rural Asia are ‘off grid’ and thus can result in incomplete analytical information.

The variety of written languages across Asia also complicates the flow and analysis of data across countries in the region. On top of all this, Asian countries have been slow to include Big Data analytics as part of their IT education. For example, Japan has a significantly large skill gap, which would explain the slow adoption of Big Data analytics among Japanese companies.

Despite these regional drawbacks, India and China have still managed to fare well in the IBM survey. India has of course always been at the forefront of developing IT professionals, and Hong Kong’s recent focus on tertiary education for data scientists and analysts with both technical and business skills has catapulted China close to the top of Big Data lists.

In fact, with the future in mind, India and China top the IBM list of companies planning to increase investment into Big Data in the coming years.

Realising the untapped opportunities for Big Data in Asia beyond India and China, Malaysia also aspires to be a regional leader in Big Data analytics.

Leading the way for Malaysia is the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC). MDEC recently hosted Big Data Week Asia 2016 to encourage digital innovation ecosystems for Big Data in Malaysia. It also launched the National Big Data Analytics Innovation Network to accelerate BDA adoption in Malaysia.

Alongside public sector partners, MDEC also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) and

MIMOS to establish a Big Data Analytics Digital Government Lab. Such MoUs will focus on developing high-impact Big Data analytics solutions to key government and private sectors that play important roles in Malaysia’s economy like banking, telecommunication, education, and transportation.

Admittedly, Malaysia is rather low in terms of numbers of data scientists.

Currently, this number stands at about 300. To close this talent gap, MDEC has been working with its strategic partners Cloudera, Coursera and TheCADs to nurture national talent in Big Data analytics.

On MDEC’s advice, postgraduate and undergraduate courses on data sciences are being introduced in both public and private tertiary institutions.

For example, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia has established its own Big Data Centre offering specialised data sciences courses. Through this strategy, Malaysia aims to produce 2,000 data scientists and 16,000 data professionals by 2020.

Existing Big Data professionals in Malaysia are also highly passionate about this sector and its potential growth. Most notably, Big Data Malaysia is an informal group of Big Data professionals that meet regularly.

As a testament to Malaysia’s bright Big Data analytics future, there are already 22 multinationals including industry leaders like Teradata, IHS Markit and SiteCore, have set up shop here. Furthermore, two local Big Data analytics companies, Fusionex and Data Micron have already expanded their business activities overseas.

Currently, Malaysia’s closest competition is Singapore. Singapore also harbours similar aspirations to be the Big Data hub of Asia, or at least, of Southeast Asia. It is investing heavily in building advanced data centre infrastructure and developing a sizeable pool of Big Data professionals.

The friendly competition between these two fast-developing countries should only encourage interest and investment from the international Big Data analytics sector into this part of the world. u

Google data centre in Georgia.

A data centre diagnostic station.

Google data centre in IOWA.

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DRIVING FORCE BEHIND MALAYSIA’S DIGITAL ECONOMY MIMOS Bhd, Malaysia’s National R&D Centre in ICT, was established in 1985 and more than 30 years down the road, has it truly contributed to the national agenda of transforming Malaysia into a digital, innovation economy? We speak to its President and CEO Datuk Abdul Wahab Abdullah on the agency’s path ahead.

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eadquartered in Technology Park Malaysia, Bukit Jalil, MIMOS has always been a purpose-driven organisation with a focus on applied research in communication technology.

Parked under the purview of the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry, it has already established research divisions such as big data, artificial intelligence, nanoelectronics, cognitive analytics and more.

Starting last year, MIMOS has built and implemented big data architecture in several ministries, hoping to mine data, so as to drive the creation of new services among the local companies.

Hydraulic Research Institute of Malaysia (NAHRIM), river basin monitoring system; JAKIM, looking at the distribution of religious aspect.

We developed the MyHealth data warehouse, where data collected from all hospitals and government clinics are put in a central database, enabling the ministry to monitor the health landscape of the country. It has been designed so the data is harmonised with WHO’s International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10), medical classification codes for diseases, signs and symptoms, abnormal findings and so on. We are the first in the world to implement the latest code classification.

Big data and IoT have been around in the tech industry for many years. What are the current policies here in Malaysia to encourage their development?

Let’s talk big data first. MIMOS has played a critical in developing the technology for the government and local industries. The funding came from the 10th Malaysia Plan to develop the big data framework for ministries and the big data lab in MIMOS last year.

We have a few big data initiatives – Finance Ministry, from the perspective of cost of living; National

What are the challenges in getting the ministry to comply or set up systems compliant with big data?

They weren’t many actually because our architecture is built in such a way that it is compliant and implementable across all government agencies. The challenge I would say is to ensure data integrity and privacy are not compromised, complying with the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA).

For example, the National Registration Department will not allow certain databases to be accessed, to protect the privacy of the citizens.

But we have tools to use their web

service to pull data, hence avoiding intrusion into their existing systems.

What is MIMOS’ next step in relation to big data?

Aside from data analytics from other ministries, our main aim is to figure out the next initiatives that will drive the Malaysian digital economy. One of them is Open Data. Of course, ministries cannot make all their data public but certain data fields can be revealed so others can use them to come up with new services.

For example, health data. You won’t know the health history of each person but pharmaceutical companies, medical insurers can come up with new businesses. That’s what we will do the future – big data to drive services.

Another example is data from all the sensors the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry have in place. Together with the supporting industry and MIMOS, the data can be harnessed to create solutions.

Where does the government data sit, and how protected is it?

Many of the ministries have their own servers in the HQ which are backed up at the MAMPU data centres. PDPA is very important so sensitive data often resides in the ministries’ own servers. Big data

alone is not enough; it has to be supported by encryption and data strings have to be managed properly.

This poses a challenge to Open Data since some ministries are not yet structured properly which can risk exposure. Creation of new services can be derived from data from not only one but also many government agencies.

Aside from driving new service, what are the benefits that are linked to the big data implementation in Malaysia?

I’m very proud to say that Malaysia is a showcase for big data work, especially in the government agencies. Now local companies use them as success stories and take our solutions to developing countries and implement what we did in the respective countries. MIMOS has become an enabler. This year we and other local companies are intensifying our approach to take our solutions out to the global market. Our government has become our ambassador, opening doors to their peers in other countries that will help pave the way for us.

What about IoT? Can you share with us some of MIMOS’s initiatives?

Without big data to run services, IoT is just ‘things’. We have something called BITX Labs (Big Data IoT Technology Accelerator) where we provide middleware to startups to test their applications, devices and services.

The middleware also connects to big data analytics and others.

One of the focus areas is video and behaviour analytics. In Malaysia, we have many fancy and vanity number plates, so we and our partner, Huawei have developed one that recognises all of them. We have deployed it on PLUS highways.

In the future, there won’t be toll gantries, instead the system will just bill you by the vehicle plates.

Huawei Singapore will also implement this solution to identify Malaysian vehicle plates in Singapore. They are having issues with our non-standard ones. We have to be smart about it, hence the focus on niche areas.

Among the challenges to ensure Malaysia is ready for IoT is equipping the rural areas with reliable internet connection. Where are we now in terms of last mile connectivity?

Instead of fibre optics, we have launched a few pilot trials in Pekan, Pahang, Tuaran and Kiulu in Sabah, using broadband WiFi backhaul

with speeds up to 1Gps and run an application known as Smart Community Infrastructure System (iComm). The hardware is mounted on a pole and powered by solar with camera. It provides connectivity in the village with VoIP phones and public policing. Villagers don’t need nightly Rukun Tetangga patrols anymore. You can check out the camera feed on your phone.

Places prone to natural disasters will have sensors in the right places.

If anything comes up on the sensors, villagers will get an in-situ situ early warning system. Community leaders can send bulletins to the public, is “push to the phone” a term. It also has localised services to help develop the microeconomy with a listing, geotag-enabled listing.

We also have a centre to help educate residents on digital trading and more. The iComm also has an emergency call function that connects you to the nearest police station.

I personally hope this will narrow the gap between urban and rural IoT development while preparing the country to move into the Fourth Industrial Revolution. u

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s the world population increases, the burden that humans place on the planet and its finite resources increases as well. Global population figures currently stand at 7.1 billion and are projected to increase to eight billion by 2025.

Growing populations also means that more and more people are being born or are migrating into urban areas. At the moment, more than half of the world population live in cities, with some countries showing drastically higher urbanisation rates.

Countries like Singapore and Hong Kong are already completely urbanised, with 100% of their population living in cities. Malaysia is not far behind. Some 75% of Malaysians are living in cities today.

This rapid worldwide urbanisation has caused energy and water usage to spike around the world. Global energy consumption is on the rise daily, and is predicted to increase by as much as 56% by 2040.

Likewise, clean water is a quickly diminishing resource. More than half of the world’s population will be living in water-stressed areas by 2025.

There is a worldwide trend towards smart cities and smart living to reduce the negative impacts of urbanisation, and to more efficient use of limited natural resources like energy and water.

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The term “smart city” means that a city uses information and communication technologies to deliver sustainable economic development and a higher quality of life for its people, while optimally managing natural resources.

Implemented properly, smart cities can use big data to understand how people move around in cities, interact with infrastructure, and use energy and other resources.

Such analytics can be used then to optimise the cities to produce less pollution and garbage, and save more energy and water. It can also help with congestion issues like parking problems.

It is expected that there will be at least 88 smart cities around the world by 2025. There are not yet many examples of fully smart cities today; however the government of South Korea has collaborated with Cisco to develop the world’s first smart “city in a box”.

The smart city of Songdo in South Korea is located on reclaimed land just 40 miles outside Seoul.

It is a completely connected city, where almost all devices, buildings and roads connect and speak to each other via wireless sensors and microchips.

In Songdo, big data is used to enhance citizen comfort and safety. Traffic flow is analysed and

optimised through radio frequency identification (RFID) sensors on cars. Real-time public transportation information is made available to citizens via their smartphones.

Also, the whereabouts of children can be tracked at all times via wearable bracelet sensors.

Smart infrastructure also increases energy savings in the city.

In-house garbage disposal units suck away garbage to treatment centres, which then energy for Sangdo.

Furthermore, a smart energy grid uses big data to measure the presence of people in a particular area at any given time, and adjusts the street lighting accordingly.

Other cities around the world are implementing partial smart city solutions to overcome their urban woes. In Saudi Arabia, big data analytics are being implemented for crowd control to prevent stampedes and other tragedies during the ultrabusy Hajj months.

Dubuque, a city in the United States, has implemented smart water systems to help households reduce water consumption by an average of 7%.

Also, the Singaporean government hosts an open data portal (data.gov.sg) that makes big datasets on transportation, healthcare, weather and education freely available, to encourage people

MAKING

ASIAN CITIES

Implementation of big data analytics can help solve urban woes.

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SMARTER

to develop applications that can improve the lives of their citizens.

Malaysia is slowly but surely on the track towards implementing smart city solutions to address certain long-standing urban problems. So far, these efforts have mainly focused on smart solutions for traffic congestion and energy conservation.

In terms of energy usage, Tenaga Nasional Berhad has launched pilot smart meter projects in Malacca and Putrajaya. These smart meters will analyse big data collected from electricity usage patterns to provide personalised information to consumers.

Each household can view its energy consumption patterns and even compare this with its neighbours’ consumption patterns.

Based on this, recommendations to optimise usage can also be provided.

Tenaga is planning to install 8.5 million smart meters all over Malaysia within the next 10 years. This can eventually be incorporated into a smart grid for energy throughout the nation.

More holistically, the Malaysian Digital Economy Corp (MDEC) is already collaborating with Malaysian Industry-Government Group for High Technology (MIGHT) to jointly prepare a smart city framework for Malacca in conjunction with the state’s green city action plan.

This plan would incorporate big data technology with green growth principles to create a truly smart city for the future.

Cyberjaya is another city which is getting the smart city treatment.

Cyberview Sdn Bhd has been given the mandate by the Malaysian government to spearhead the development of Cyberjaya into a full-fledged smart city. Its four-phase plan kicked off in 2015, and aims to achieve widespread access and adoption of smart city applications within the city by the year 2020.

It is currently on the lookout for partners to develop ideas and solutions to improve the liveability of the city. For example, the city is at the early data-gathering

stage of integrating a smart traffic management system to better handle traffic flow.

The system will enable traffic lights to communicate with each other at intersections, and also with other major intersections in the city.

Big data collected can eventually help intelligently direct traffic at the intersections to reduce waiting time at traffic lights across the city.

To encourage smart innovation in other critical areas like water usage and waste management, the government is open to investing in other promising smart initiatives, and welcomes proposals from all around the world.

Malaysia also recently hosted the Smart Cities Asia 2016 conference and exhibition to attract innovators and drum up interest in Malaysia’s smart growth future.

At the current rate of growth, Malaysia is projected to reach 90% urbanisation by 2050. To ensure that this growth is achieved with minimal impact on the environment and natural resources, smart solutions for smart Malaysian cities are definitely the way to go. u

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CHEAPER AND GREENER CONNECTIVITY ALTERNATIVE Recognising the high cost of implementing IoT, Atilze Digital works to deliver smart city solutions based on LoRa technology.

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uilding a smart city based on IoT hardware is costly. In most cases, the high cost comes from the 4G communication towers and power consumption that are needed to keep the hardware connected to one another.

The push to innovate and build smart, technologically advanced cities have forced governments to scrutinise the cost – initial and continuous upkeep.

Analysts in the US have forecasted that cities around the world will invest US$41 trillion over the next 20 years on infrastructure alone. Malaysia, too, has ambitions to create smart cities, starting with Cyberjaya. In place of expensive, high-energy communication towers, the city looks to something more affordable and green.

Wholly owned by Yen Global Bhd, which counts Taiwan’s Gemtek Technology Co Ltd and Malaysia’s Green Packet Bhd among its stakeholders, Atilze Digital Sdn Bhd has introduced LoRa technology, a first in Southeast Asia, as part of Cyberview Sdn Bhd’s smart city initiative.

Atilze CEO Gerard Lim Explains “The LoRa network is a low power network that we use to connect our environment sensors in Cyberjaya. The gateways or receivers are fairly small and we typically install them on rooftops. Sensors ‘communicate’ with the gateways, providing data on the environment in real-time.

“To conserve power, the transmitters is in sleep mode whenever data is not being sent over. Power usage is so low that we are able to use batteries for years, eliminating the need for a direct power source.

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“Once the sensors ping back to the gateway, the information goes to our cloud so data users can access via a web dashboard.

In our gateways, we use 3G/LTE SIM cards to keep them connected to our servers.”

The LoRa network Atilze has operates on the ISM band (industrial, scientific, and medical radio band) that doesn’t require a licence from the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission. However Atilze has sought clearance to use 919-923 MHz, which is

“We are looking at providing the environmental data, similar to Open Data, so other parties can research or develop other solutions, for the initial phase, involving Cyberview.” ~ Atilze CEO Gerard Lim

defined by MCMC as short range device that includes RFID applications.

“For example, smart metering monitors electricity, gas and water usage in residential and commercial buildings. There will be hundreds of thousands of these sensors in a relatively small area. If we use a purely 3G/

SMART CITY AND SMART TOWNSHIP Environmental Information

Smart Parking

Improve quality of life for residents through localised information on air quality, haze, heatwave, rain and wind.

Manage resident and visitors parking better with real time parking lot updates.

Integrated Security

Street Lighting

Built-in panic button within homes and at key areas. Works together with CCTV to remotely identify emergencies.

Increased street lights efficiency by activating based on light levels and people’s presence.

Flood & Drain Monitoring

Smart Waste Management

Detect potential floods and drainage system failures, triggering early warning to management and residents.

Real time reading of waste levels in garbage containers for better garbage collection.

Smart Matering

Landscape Sensors

Connected electricity, water and gas meters provide insights on usage and potential savings.

Get accurate view of soil humidity and temperature. Save water by watering only when neccessary.

LTE technology, the pingbacks from sensors will create a massive congestions at the base station.

“To alleviate congestion, you’ll then need more base stations that are costly compared to LoRa technology which costs 10 times less. Because of the way 3G/LTE technology works, sensors and base stations are in continuous connection, but LoRa doesn’t need all that.

“LoRa devices ping in about 0.5 seconds then immediately go to sleep and the gateways are capable of handling multiple connections without being congested.”

Gemtek, a member of the LoRa Alliance, manufactures LoRa gateways and modules that Atilze uses. The LoRa modules work to link sensors to the gateway. Although the sensors are from third party companies, the LoRa modules are integrated with it.

Sensors in Cyberjaya “For Cyberjaya, we have installed sensors to measure temperature, air quality and humidity. We are always concerned about air quality. Our sensors are placed in 10

locations and able to perceive up to PM2.5.

Although we can have information in real-time, we set them to refresh every one minute, which is way better than the nationwide air quality sensors.

“Temperature may not fluctuate much but if humidity is high extremely, you’ll feel like you’re in a sauna. This will be an onset of a heatwave that can cause dizzy spells and even fainting in some people.”

With the environmental data collected, Atilze is able to provide localised and precise information to citizens, schools, businesses and government, so that they can make the right decisions for the wellbeing of the people.

In the future, information can be disseminated through a citizen’s app which will also receive notifications when it crosses the unhealthy threshold. Aside from that, SMS services can be made available for the public to subscribe to air pollution alerts in specific areas such as their homes and schools.

The second rollout phase will be to scale up to cover the Klang Valley. About 29 gateways are ready for service in Subang,

Puchong and Technology Park, and also along the Federal Highway, Port Klang, Damansara and KL city centre as well as selected light industrial and residential areas.

Atilze also has other sensors in the making such as flood mitigation and smart parking. To collect flood-related variables, sensors at rivers and drains track water level information, together with rain sensors to record rain amount and duration. These valuable data systems work together to show how the drainage system responds when it rains, highlighting possible obstructions that lead to flooding and enabling smart preventive maintenance. Sensors on ground level will detect when flooding is expected to happen.

Alerts can be sent to the water department to take corrective measures, and also to notify citizens in the vicinity through mobile app notification to avoid the specific areas.

Atilze still has several tricks up its sleeve, with more exciting and niche smart city solutions ready for use in agriculture, vehicle diagnostics and more in Southeast Asia. u

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he last time you were at a hospital or in a bank, you may have noticed networks of tubes running up pillars or walls. You may even have seen someone putting small items such as medicine or money into a container and slotting it into the tube, where it is instantly whisked away to another part of the building.

These pneumatic tubes use compressed air or partial vacuums to

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propel cylindrical containers quickly over short distances. Unfortunately, this concept of moving things at high speeds through tubes was never successfully scaled up.

However, this will change. In August 2013, celebrated inventor and Tesla founder Elon Musk released a white paper on a high-speed ground transport system based on this relatively simple idea of propelling cylindrical pods through near-vacuum tubes.

He called it the Hyperloop.

The name “Hyperloop” is selfexplanatory. For efficiency, Musk visualised the track to go in a loop.

“Hyper” was chosen to portray high speeds of up to twice that of a plane, even though Musk’s preliminary designs would not actually reach actual hypersonic speeds.

Musk’s initial concept visualised passenger pods of about 7 feet 4 inches in diameter floating on a thin layer of air within a continuous steel tube, similar to how hockey pucks are suspended on an air hockey table.

Linear induction motors would accelerate and decelerate the capsule.

Making the pod float eliminates substantial drag and atmospheric resistance, and allows the capsule to glide for most of the journey. This makes the Hyperloop potentially the most energy-efficient transport system around.

However, the white paper realistically admitted that much more work has to be done before the concept would be ready for reallife application.

Elon Musk is famous for his commitment to open-source and crowdsourcing as a catalyst for innovation. Hence in true Musk fashion, his Hyperloop white paper contained detailed engineering and design elements with which people could give feedback or find innovations and solutions to issues highlighted in the paper.

Specifically, Musk has called for innovations on the physics and control mechanism of the Hyperloop, detailed vehicle and station loading and unloading designs, and cost and benefit comparisons of the Hyperloop with more conventional magnetic levitation systems.

Indeed, this white paper proved to be the catalyst for many to jump on the proverbial Hyperloop wagon, in a race to create a safe and economically-viable Hyperloop transportation system.

To facilitate this, Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX is building a test track to be used for mostly studentbased Hyperloop pod development competitions. Many companies are also working on developing hardware for the Hyperloop, and have already proposed several improvements to the initial design.

One of the companies involved, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT), has already initiated talks with several governments governments which may work as possible Hyperloop sites.

It is in discussion with India to build the first working Hyperloop track to connect Chennai to Bangalore in 30 minutes. The Bangalore location was chosen to take advantage of the wealth of talent in engineering and other technological fields in the city.

HTT is also in talks with the Czech Republic and Slovakia to examine the feasibility of a Hyperloop line connecting cities in both countries.

However, as with any new exciting design concept, legitimate concerns have been raised. Any slight ground movement or seismic activity may produce misalignments to the tube, which may be catastrophic for the perfectly engineered system. The novelty and vulnerability of the tube may also prove highly tempting to terrorists and vandals.

Furthermore, the narrow passenger tubes raise concerns for

passenger comfort and safety. Would claustrophobic passengers feel safe in a windowless, potentially noisy tube? If the high speeds and pressure make it impossible to stand during the journey, what happens when you need to go to the toilet? And even worse, what if you have a heart attack mid-journey?

One more pressing concern is the issue of cost. Even though Musk’s concept is designed to be low-energy and hence cost-efficient, many economic experts have surmised that the sky-high construction costs would make Hyperloop tickets much more expensive than anticipated.

In response to this, tech whisperer Lloyd Marino has proposed Big Data as the solution for Hyperloop cost concerns. Marino believes that Hyperloop operations could potentially offer a wealth of Big Data to interested parties, to the extent that the Hyperloop could even be entirely free.

The mundane, windowless Hyperloop journey calls out for on-

board entertainment and advertising.

The pods could be developed in conjunction with communications and entertainment providers to engage with commuters at multiple touchpoints through the journey. This can be used to collect information about this captive audience, in exchange for subsidised or free travel.

Big Data can also be used to collect information of the Hyperloops’s capacity and maintenance needs. Advanced analytics based on such data can be used to optimise the scheduling of timetables, and also maintenance activities. This can dramatically increase the Hyperloop’s efficiency and further reduce running costs.

With the rate of technological advancements nowadays, complemented with the power of crowdsourcing and Big Data, an efficient, working Hyperloop system is almost a certainty in our lifetime.

Perhaps a Kuala Lumpur-Singapore route may only be a decade away. u

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HANDS OFF THE WHEEL:

TECHNOLOGY THAT POWERS DRIVERLESS CARS

Tesla’s technology is driving automotive innovation with its network of autonomous cars.

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hen Tesla released its Model S sedan and X SUV in 2014, an optional feature was offered to customers: a “technology package” which, for a price, fitted the car with cameras and sensors that would warn the driver of an impending collision.

However, this package held a secret. The sensors were on double duty; not only to help that particular car avoid accidents, but also to gather data about all the drives that the car would take as well.

Through these sensors, Tesla has managed to collect data on about 1.3 billion miles of roads. This includes information on obstacles, driving conditions, places where drivers slow down, speed up or swerve, and millions of other minute actions that drivers tend to do almost automatically.

These data points are uploaded into Tesla’s cloud, and are fed into a computer programme that uses algorithms to not only generate maps containing directional information, but also create a “vocabulary” about driving.

For example, if many Tesla drivers keep braking suddenly on a

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particular stretch of road, this road will be flagged for lower speeds only.

The programme can also detect more nuanced driving patterns.

If a ball rolls across the road for instance, the programme can recognise that there is a high likelihood that a child may suddenly run onto the road chasing after the ball, and ensure that the car knows what to do.

With these sensors, Tesla drivers essentially became the “master trainers” of not only their cars, but the whole fleet of Tesla vehicles.

Whatever one car learns will be shared with the whole network.

The data collected from its ever expanding fleet of electric cars is leapfrogging Tesla light years ahead of the competition in the race towards achieving fully operational autonomous vehicles. However, Elon Musk, Tesla’s founder, is careful to clarify that Tesla is all about responsible use of its data.

Tesla cars are equipped with the ability to be updated over the air.

This means that whenever there is a software update, Tesla owners do not need to take their cars to a service centre to manually download the update into their vehicle. The updates are literally sent and installed over

the air, often without the drivers even realising it.

However, these updates are only released when Tesla is confident that it is empirically safe. For example, the first round of updates only enabled the Autopilot to change lanes and parallel-park the vehicles.

The Enhanced Autopilot, released later, has Autosteer and Traffic-Aware Cruise Control capabilities. Full Self Driving Capability for Tesla models, may only be available towards the end of the year, or when Tesla is confident enough of the safety of the update.

Before anyone gets worried about any I, Robot type of vehicular uprising, rest assured that the vehicles are all also equipped with an easily applied override function.

The company’s use of big data for automotive innovation has not been without its fair share of challenges. One of the risks that big data programmes are most susceptible to is hacking. Indeed, a group of Chinese hackers did manage to hack into a Tesla while it was being driven. They managed to take over the car’s brakes, side mirrors, windshield wipers, and trunk.

However, just 10 days after the hack, Tesla sent an over the air

Google Waymo – A Strong Contender Another company that is making strides in the industry of autonomous driving is Google Waymo. The name is based on the phrase “a new way forward into mobility”.

In its early days, regular cars were retrofitted with a LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) laser system, which both records data and helps the car navigate the world safely. However, due to its limited fleet, Waymo can only claim data from three million miles driven, compared to Tesla’s 1.3 billion.

Despite these limited miles, Waymo managed to use the data to develop cars without steering wheels or brakes: purely passenger vehicles only.

Indeed, Waymo has been testing such cars since 2015. The first passenger-only ride was taken by Steve Mahan, a blind friend of Waymo’s principal engineer, Nathan Fairfield. The car drove itself successfully in “normal traffic conditions” in Austin, Texas.

Waymo insists that it is not a car company. It instead focuses more on developing the technology that enables cars to drive autonomously. It is now working together with major car companies to put sensors on their cars

update to its whole fleet to patch the problem and protect the cars from any future hacking attempts.

Also, a fatal accident in May 2016 has forced Tesla to re-look at vital weaknesses in its current Autopilot system. A man accidentally drove his Tesla Model S under an 18-wheeler on a Florida highway, as both the driver and the Autopilot failed to notice the white side of the trailer against the bright sky. The brakes were not applied, and the driver unfortunately perished.

The concern raised by such an accident is something that Tesla continues to highlight to its drivers – even in a fully autonomous car, a driver must not be complacent. In fact, Tesla insists that drivers must always drive with their hands on the wheel. Even though big data analysis is already very advanced, the human touch is still needed, especially when

to give them self-driving capabilities. A 100-strong fleet of Chrysler Pacificas are currently being readied for road tests.

While Waymo and Tesla are both strong contenders in the field, both companies have very different visions of the automotive future. One puts humans firmly in charge, while the other is all about autonomy in the true sense of the word.

it comes to driving, which can give rise to life and death situations.

With the Full Self Driving Capability update looming on the horizon, Musk is set to further strengthen his position as an

automotive visionary. He seems to have found the magic formula of the human touch combined with advanced big data technology to make future driving as safe and efficient as it can be. u

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MAGIC

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MAGNETIC LEVITATION Maglev technology has long been giving the Hyperloop a run for its money.

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he Hyperloop is currently capturing much of the world’s attention as the future of highspeed long-distance travel, but much of it is still at the theoretical and testing stage. The world has yet to see a fully operational Hyperloop, and may not see one for years to come.

Elon Musk’s Hyperloop is based on the concept of frictionless travel in a vacuum tube. While this approach to frictionless travel is new, another friction reduction method has already been quite successfully reducing train traveltimes for decades. This is the magnetic levitation technology, or Maglev.

The cornerstone of Maglev technology

A 375 mph maglev train from Central Japan Railway.

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is the straightforward concept of electromagnetic fields. If you have every played around with magnets, you would know that magnets with opposing poles would stick together quite strongly, hence the saying “opposites attract”.

However, if one of these magnets is flipped around so opposing poles are facing each other, a powerful invisible force would seemingly magically hold these magnets apart.

Such carefully calibrated electromagnets have been put to work to create Maglev trains. Trains, usually with rubber wheels, sit on top of a guiding track with electromagnets both on the track and the train. Alternating currents vary the

magnetic field on particular sections of the track to propel the train forward at a controlled speed.

At high enough speeds, the train “takes off ” as the repelling force of these electromagnets lift the train up and keeps it afloat on a cushion of air. This eliminates friction in a similar way that a vacuum would do.

Thanks to this, Maglev trains can theoretically reach speeds of almost 3,000 km/h. While this top speed is nowhere close to the hypersonic speed that Hyperloops should theoretically be able to achieve, it is still very, very fast.

In practice, a Japanese Maglev train broke the world ground speed record, reaching 600

En Route

Chuo Shinkansen

Nagano Prefecture Station

Gifu Prefecture Station

Japan’s proposed high-speed train uses magnetic levitation.

Tokyo Terminal Station Yamanashi Prefecture Station

Kanagawa Prefecture Station

Propulsion Coil

Levitation Guidance Coil

Nagoya Terminal Station

Tokaido Shinkansen

Superconducting Magnet

Pacific Ocean

Side Wall

Acela Express (U.S.) Trenitalia, NTV (Italy) High-speed rail (Taiwan)

Selected intercity highspeed rail lines in miles per hours

ICE (Germany) High-speed rail (China) KTX (South Korea)

Guide Way

1 Coils Coils are installed on either side of the guideway.

AVE (Spain) TGV Est (France) Tohoku Shinkansen (Japan) Chuo Shinkansen maglev (Japan) Proposed 0

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km/h in 2015. The seven-car train zoomed along a test track near Mount Fuji with 49 Central Japan Railway employees on board.

At its fastest cruising speed, it covered 1.8km in just under 11 seconds.

While this particular train is not yet available to the public, Japan is hardly a stranger to Maglev technology. An “Urban Maglev” system has been operational in the city of Nagoya since 2005. While its top speed is only at 100 km/h, this is intentional, as this urban transport system has to be slow enough for frequent stops.

Maglev transportation technology has caught on, especially quickly in Northeast Asia. Other than Japan, China and South Korea also have functioning Maglev trains.

China currently has two Maglev tracks in operation.

Shanghai’s Maglev train is currently the world’s fastest in operation, serving the airport-city route at a top speed of 430 km/h. A second track recently started servicing passengers to and from Changsa International Airport and Changsa city in the Hunan province. In South Korea, a Maglev line connects Incheon Airport to Seoul.

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The longer distances and minimal stops of airport routes are ideal for Maglev trains, as the ability for high cruising speeds can be fully taken advantage of. In this way, the trains are also seen as the future of longdistance, cross-country Shinkansen bullet train travel in Japan. For example, a Maglev Shinkansen planned for 2045 should be able to cut down travel time from Tokyo to Osaka from two-and-a-half hours to merely one hour.

Maglev technology is about more than just high speeds. The floating system minimises noise pollution, which has been especially appreciated by Nagoya residents living close to the Urban Maglev tracks.

Furthermore, the lack of friction, thus reducing the risk of slippage, enables the train to function in just about any weather, inclement or not. This makes Maglev trains much safer than conventional ones, with only one serious accident so far involving a test train in Germany.

Another benefit is the minimal use of wheels. Wheels have consistently been a source of the highest maintenance costs for traditional trains. They constantly need

2 Levitation System On-board magnets create an electric current in the coils, causing them to become electromagnets. This generates pushing and pulling forces that lift the train and levitate it at a constant height.

3 Propulsion System The train is propelled by the pulling and pushing forces created when the polarity of magnets all along the guideway is rapidly reversed, alternately attracting and repelling the magnets in the train.

to be repaired or replaced because of wear and tear. The Maglev’s reduced dependence on, and eventual total removal of, wheels can translate to massive savings for train operators.

However, these potential savings have to be considered alongside the massive costs involved in building lengthy electromagnetic tracks. This costly initial investment is the main factor that has limited adoption of this technology to only a few advanced and wealthy Northeast Asian countries. For instance, the TokyoOsaka Maglev Shinkansen that is currently being built is estimated to cost US$91 billion to complete.

Despite these prohibitive costs, Maglev trains have been largely seen as one of the pioneers of the new age of transportation.

Indeed, the Japanese government is actively promoting the adoption of its Maglev technology in other parts of the world.

While the world waits for the almost mythical Hyperloop, Maglev technology has already proven to be the more immediately accessible alternative to safe, fast and efficient long-distance travel. u

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BIG DATA

IN FLEET MANAGEMENT Analytic platforms will enable car companies, fleet owners and insurance firms to gain insights into their business.

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n the near future, all cars will be connected to manufacturers, service companies, insurance carriers, their drivers, and the world around them. Most cars currently have more than 400 sensors built into them, capturing data every few milliseconds about tire pressure, driver behaviour, speeds, car wear and tear, and more.

As more computer chips, sensors and apps are added to them, the volume of big data coming from vehicles will explode. Powerful analytic platforms will enable car companies, fleet owners, service and repair shops, and insurance firms to aggregate all of this data and analyse it simultaneously to generate breakthrough insights.

These insights can be used for a number of different applications to: • Drive new on-board driver applications • Enhance marketing, sales, and product development

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• Improve the ownership and driving experiences • Enhance driver and passenger safety • Create predictive maintenance and repair services • Personalise insurance premium rates according to driver behaviour.

Steve Mitgang, CEO of SmartDrive Systems – an in-cab video and safety analytics provider – said big data can help make big decisions and, ultimately, big changes.

Analysing the data and making it actionable for the organisation can lead to better decisions and strategic business moves.

“For example, on paper, many professional drivers look the same – especially if they have good, safe driving records. However, understanding their actual driving performance can reveal key differences that cost fleets.

“So while Driver A and B have similar safe driving records, Big Data

will show that Driver A routinely makes U-turns on public roadways – putting himself, the cargo and the fleet at a higher degree of risk.

“Driving measurable improvement in fleet operations is all about uncovering the less obvious, or hidden, risks while providing that information in an ‘actionable’ format. In this way, by proactively monitoring data and using it to coach drivers, trucking fleets become safer – saving lives, protecting jobs and saving money,” he told FleetOwner magazine.

Increase Driver Safety With Early Warning Systems Use big data analytics to combine historical fleet data, sensor data, and geolocation data to precompute potential risks and send early warnings to drivers. For example, an on-board app can push datadriven alerts and informed

recommendations to drivers (for instance, to slow down as they approach a dangerous curve).

Personalise Car Maintenance Recommendations Use big data analytics to push personalised, data-driven car maintenance recommendations to drivers and owners. The platform can combine structured data such as car manufacturing and parts data, supplier data, historical repair data with unstructured sensor data, to understand driver behaviour, the impact on parts and components in the car, and patterns of failure to notify drivers about maintenance and repair needs.

For example, they may need to replace brakes earlier than most drivers because sensors detect that they brake hard and frequently. Big data analytics can generate insights into car efficiency and give car designers and manufacturers insights into which parts or systems are failing earlier than expected – issues that can be addressed proactively with suppliers to avoid future problems.

Create Customer-Driven Infotainment Services Cars are new venues for infotainment – for example, streaming music and even video entertainment for passengers. Car manufacturers seeking to innovate in this area are incorporating large touch screens into car dashboards and integrating services like Spotify, Pandora and Sirius with their on-board computers.

Using big data analytics, they can analyse historical usage data of these services to understand what people are actually using, detect performance and quality issues, and then use this data to inform future R&D efforts and co-innovate with partners to create differentiating, value-added infotainment services.

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Personalised Insurance

Big data can help make big decisions and, ultimately, big changes. Analysing the data and making it actionable for the organisation can lead to better decisions and strategic business moves.

”

Align Driver Behaviour Insights With Customer Support Services Car sensors collect granular data on how drivers brake, drive, accelerate, stop, and more. Using big data analytics, you can analyse this data and make it available to customer support representatives so they understand how a car is used, how driver behaviour aligns with customer complaints, and what to focus on during routine maintenance.

Streamline Recalls And Maintenance Big data analytics makes it easy to perform the most granular data discovery to identify fault patterns and potential resolutions to problem parts and systems. This data can help auto manufacturers and parts suppliers streamline recalls or in-field problem maintenance.

Insurers can use connected car data to better understand driver behaviour, and the impact on claims, losses and policy rates to better segment policy holders according to behaviour. This will allow the insurers to use real data in setting policy premiums, even as far as one-to-one personalisation of rates and features.

Protect Against Unreasonable Driver/ Owner Claims When customers have accidents and claim vehicle functionality as a contributing factor, big data analytics can help you analyse connected car data, shed light on what really happened, and help you defend against unreasonable claims.

For example, if a driver claims that faulty brakes caused him to have an accident, you can analyse car data to verify they did, in fact, not brake and isolate mechanical problems.

Bill Combs, director-connected fleet for Penske Truck Leasing, believes there’s a multitude of ways today’s trucking fleets can use big data to help improve their operations.

“A company’s IT or technical team needs to manage the big data environment – the actual infrastructure, databases and security.

“An ‘enablement team’ within the business needs to manage the data validation, data quality and access points to the data so that all users, throughout the business have access to consistent, trustworthy and usable data sets.

“Big data can add exponential value to traditional or small data.

Every business generates data from their daily practices, and good businesses have figured out ways to pull value from that data. Layering in big data (real time data or transactional data) can bring your traditional data models to life,” he was quoted as saying. u

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FIGHTING FIRES WITH DATA

Big data analytics are helping scientists and first responders understand, fight and predict forest fires.

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orest fires are common all around the world, and are sometimes a natural part of the ecosystem, as a regular way for the landscape to refresh itself for the new season.

Other times, they are related to human activity. Either way, forest fires that go out of control have the potential to severely damage landscapes and human property.

Forest fires are usually located far from human settlements. By the time such fires travel close enough to threaten human property or detected by sight or smell, damage incurred would have already been massive.

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Any efforts to respond to these conflagrations at this stage would involve desperate damage control, and likely be futile.

Sometimes, fires that occur in very secluded areas may never get detected at all. If these fires occur on sensitive landscapes such as peatlands, the environmental damage is amplified as huge amounts of carbon will be released into the atmosphere.

This contributes to the acceleration of climate change and significant loss of habitat.

Scientists have long been using satellite imagery to detect fires.

However, this visual method has its

drawbacks. Satellite imagery usually relies on the presence of smoke to detect fires.

However, certain types of forest fires can produce more or less amounts of smoke. Hence, smoke-based detection is not a good reflection of the severity of forest fires. Furthermore, the visibility of certain areas may also be compromised due to heavy cloud cover.

Most importantly however, satellite imagery works on real-time, and cannot predict the presence of forest fires before they occur. Also, depending on the resolution quality

of the satellite image, scientists may face difficulties pinpointing the exact locations of the fires on the ground.

Replacing Visual Cues With Predictive Data However, big data analytics are opening up interesting avenues of improvement in the area of forest fire prediction and management.

The future of forest fire management relies on wireless sensors. These network of sensors, located in strategic locations in the field, can transmit data on temperature, soil moisture or wind direction and speed to a control centre in real time.

When combined with other data from satellite images, historical data, ground models and mathematical equations, big data analysts can gain an improved understanding of fire behaviour patterns and risks.

Findings and trends that are revealed from such data analysis are important for forest fire management both in terms of improved prevention and suppression, in the short- and long-term.

Firstly, high-fire hazard environments can be more accurately identified, and hence prevention measures can be stepped up in these areas.

Secondly, big data can also help predict the extent of the area that is under fire. This is useful not only to better calculate the number of firefighting forces needed to be deployed to the area, but also to provide live support to facilitate the work of fire-fighters on site. Such big data analytics are already being applied in forest fire management in Spain and Portugal.

In fact, many European companies are looking to work with Asian governments to implement this monitoring and analytic technology.

Thirdly, this wealth of information can also be used for

long-term risk modelling and training. The data can be used to create different possible future scenarios, and to see what happens if conditions today change in the future. Scenario modelling can be useful training tools for fire-fighters to better prepare them for any eventuality.

In the US, weather stations and fire watch towers complement the work of field sensors. For example, 2,200 weather stations around the country collect fire-relevant data.

Hourly weather updates provided by these weather stations can be used to make correlations to field moisture and drying trends. Such data is the basis of low/medium/high fire danger warning systems in fireprone areas.

At fire watch towers, lookouts are people who are stationed to look out for the first wisp of smoke after a lightning storm. This data can also be fed into the data centre to be correlated against the other sources of data.

Fire data analytics are being further revolutionised with the development of an app to gather fire data. First responders in fire-prone locations in the US are using an app called ARP collector, which they can use on their iPad or iPhone.

This improves accuracy of the data collected because data is not limited to the static locations of the wireless sensors, weather stations and fire watch towers. If the responder is standing at the edge of a fire, the app can collect information closest to the fires, to be sent back to the control centre.

Taking it further is NGNS – Ingenious Solutions Lda, a Portuguese company looking for a partner in Southeast Asia to remove human

lookout points entirely. The company’s integrated monitoring system against forest fires covers a wide area.

Each sensor installation covers a 15km radius, autonomous in providing real-time information on smoke, fires and their llocation which have been successful in South America and Europe.

Coupled with big data application, forest management agencies can better prepare to combat and in some cases prevent forest fires from getting out of control.

Big data analytics for forest fire management would be highly applicable in Asia. The Southeast Asian region in particular suffers from smoke and haze pollution on an almost annual basis, as a result of forest and peat fires.

Applying such advanced analytics in this part of the world would be useful in the prevention and suppression of such fires. A haze-free region may become a real possibility with the aid of big data technology. u

A sensor being fitted in Spain.

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Designing For Digital Innovation:

How Design Is Embracing Change And Technology

by Dr. Stephen Poon

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igital innovation is the concept of developing new pragmatic solutions that are often defined as functional and ground-breaking ideas adopted in meeting technological goals. Often, these involve presenting or incorporating disruptive technologies.

The element of design is important in digital innovation as it ensures the problem is being solved in new and better ways. As a complex phenomenon, digital innovation integrates change processes, and emerges from the creative re-combination of existing capacity, to achieve the objectives of digital transformation.

As early as the turn of the 21st-century, books like Don Tapscott’s The Digital Economy (1998) laid down ground rules for successful innovation: speed, technological acceleration, collaborative platforms and leadership competencies are crucially integrated into digital era businesses.

As Esther Dyson (1998) indicated, seeking constant competitive advantages would ensure long-term sustainability, since the pace of technological scaling and financial costs of information is reduced and effective decision-making is driven by a set of rational principles.

Designing for digital innovation

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must account for, and is subject to, rigorous evaluation that integrates cultural characteristics, ethical practices (morally acceptable and socially responsible), sustainability (regenerates effectively), and technological adaptability (scaling) principles.

Since modes of digital designs are found on various communication platforms for corporations, social institutions, state-level or smaller-scale campaigns, they reflect the collective experiences, values, beliefs, trends, preferences and thought models of a society.

Robert Fabricant (2014) implies that design tools and methods could produce stronger outcomes for innovation and capacity-building if they were rooted in a pragmatic, human-centred rather than analytical, systems-based perspective.

Digitally-designed interactions have systemic impact through physical, tangible and visible forms, but it inevitably begins with the invisible dynamics and forces that drive human behaviour.

Designing for digital platforms refines or reinforces perceptions, enhances existing functionalities, or reforms and changes behaviours, offering a framework through which design practitioners reflect about technological issues, allowing them to

challenge the assumptions embedded in the way human responses are predicated, and how to generate positive outcomes.

These objectives correspond to recent thought writings discussing the role of the technology-driven, creative industries in the global market economy, where commodities and enterprises are enabled through policies encouraging digital forms of innovation, information flow, competition and cultural development, where social networks and emergent communities may evolve and flourish.

Designing for innovation refers to creative outputs and activities that synthesise imagining, prototyping,

Desirable to users

INNOVATION Viable in marketplace

Possible with technology

publishing, marketing and experience making to produce symbolic products that define cultures, societies and civilisations themselves. A great deal of attention has recently been given to ‘design thinking’, .which John Hartley (2009) redefined as the component businesses and organisations in today’s economy of consumption.

As a methodology of problem-solving, design thinking incorporates processes such as identifying problems, reviewing objectives, researching or analysing issues, ideating solutions, prototyping, implementation, evaluating and reflecting on how effectively solutions address the given problem.

Sophisticated design needs to incorporate dynamic processes that test our preformed or long-held assumptions about our values and behaviours, and a capacity for learning and reflection.

Through digital forms such as video, holographic visualisation, applications and online games, users observe, interpret and construct models of thinking, and to understanding concepts of reality and facts.

The creative inputs of designs often lead to diverse outcomes, and collaborative processes are the hallmark for successful design thinking that are desirable to users, viable in the marketplace and made possible with technology.

Yet, practical results of innovation that convey meaning, tell stories, visualise unimaginable dreams, and introduce order through beauty and elegance, involves more than just a patchwork of learning opportunities.

Innovative designs are to also be “socially inclusive”, allowing outsiders to the creative community to observe, listen, put pressure, and help offer planners input for planned social change and actions. Improving the life of specified social segments such as the less-abled or excluded communities, could be just as challenging and fulfilling as designing consumption systems to serve the masses.

Measuring the degree of change is a challenging but necessary evaluative tool, to demonstrate that design is vital to the digital economy’s most meaningful, successful endeavours.

At each stage of development, design

“Creativity is a lot like looking at the world through a kaleidoscope. You look at a set of elements, the same ones everyone else sees, but then reassemble those floating bits and pieces into an enticing new possibility.” ~ Rosabeth Moss Kanter thinking tends to lean towards visual language forms; designers must learn to communicate digital aesthetics and landscapes without losing grip of the core human means of interaction underneath their increasingly complex and specialised roles.

Visualisation of problems and potential solutions has tremendous impact: bold visualisations settle sceptics, promotes communities of professional practice, while good branding props up stakeholder confidence. As Jason Vaughan (2013) argues, consistent brand identity, along with appealing and intuitive design, enhance perceptions of usability.

If the premise for the development of breakthrough innovation is to provide opportunities for people to participate, experiment, socialise, play and learn, education and training are then required to enable passionate and curious generalists, integrators, listeners, thinkers, believers, and mostly doers, to purposefully come together.

Esther Dyson, famed American netpreneur, investor and consultant to

high-tech industries, wrote in her visionary book Release 2.1 (1998) that creativity and innovation marry purposefully as a mark of quality of technological accomplishments.

Yet, enlightened and disciplined designers would be wise to accept and even invent restrictions to their projects and endeavours, or remove them to improve the imagination dimensions, and view every impediment as a creative opportunity.

As a parting thought, the inevitable onward march of systems of digital economies, market-based organisations and institutions which support industrialisation, have produced challenges, thrills and spills for designers and innovators.

While technologies innovate content production, dissemination and consumption, they must continue to reach the inner recesses of the human psyche that seeks dialogue, sharing and relationships on equal and mutually respectful terms.

It is within this zone of practice that designing for real public good must organise their resources, educate them, and persist. u

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GENIUS AT WORK

Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry and Physiology or Medicine recognise revolutionary discoveries that will advance our understanding of the world around us.

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hen Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel read a premature obituary condemning him for profiting from the sales of arms, the inventor of dynamite bequeathed his fortune to set up the Nobel Prizes.

First awarded in 1901, the set of annual international awards bestowed to deserving Laureates by Swedish and Norwegian institutions honour advancements in Chemistry, Literature, Peace, Physics and Physiology/Medicine.

Each Nobel Laureate receives a gold medal, a diploma, and a sum of money decided by the Nobel Foundation.

As of 2012, each prize was worth US$1.2 million which is roughly equivalent to RM5.3 million.

Over a century has passed, and experts in these fields continue to make amazing discoveries that will change the face of humanity and how we live.

For the year 2016, these are the experts awarded the prizes in the categories of Chemistry, Physics and Medicine/ Physiology.

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MEDICINE/PHYSIOLOGY Japanese cell biologist, Tokyo Institute of Technology’s Institute of Innovative Research professor Yoshinori Ohsumi, was awarded with this honour for his discovery of mechanisms for autophagy.

Autophagy, from the Greek words auto (self ) and phagein (to eat), is explained as “self-eating”, a concept that surfaced in the 1960s when scientists discovered that cells could destroy their own content by enclosing it in membranes, creating sack-like vesicles that were then “recycled”.

Little was known about this process until Ohsumi’s early 1990s experiments – using baker’s yeast to identify genes essential for autophagy – he elucidated underlying mechanisms for autophagy in yeast and showed that our cells worked similarly.

What this means to the human race is a new understanding of how cells recycle content, which could lead to physiological advances for example in the adaptation to starvation or response to infection.

Mutations in autophagy genes can cause disease, and the autophagic process is involved in several conditions including cancer and neurological diseases.

Autophagy is a process by which a cell recycles unnecessary components.

PHYSICS

(From left) British-born scientist F. Duncan Haldane of Princeton University with fellow Princeton Nobel Laureates Eric Wieschaus and Joseph Taylor after winning the 2016 Nobel Prize for Physics.

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For their work on “theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter”, one half of the Nobel prize in the Physics category was awarded to David J. Thouless (University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA) and the other half to F. Duncan M. Haldane (Princeton University, NJ, USA) and J. Michael Kosterlitz (Brown University, Providence, RI, USA).

The trio revealed the secrets of exotic matter, using advanced mathematical methods to study unusual phases, or states, of matter,

such as superconductors, superfluids or thin magnetic films.

Their work has opened doors to the discovery of new and exotic phases of matter, which could lead to future applications in both materials science and electronics. In their research they used Topology, a branch of mathematics that focuses on the fundamental shape of things.

In the 1970s, Kosterlitz and Thouless overturned the then current theory that superconductivity or suprafluidity could not occur in thin layers, demonstrating that superconductivity could occur at low temperatures and also explained the

CHEMISTRY In this field, the honour went to Jean-Pierre Sauvage (University of Strasbourg, France), Sir J. Fraser Stoddart (Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA) and Bernard L. Feringa (University of Groningen, the Netherlands) “for the design and synthesis of molecular machines”.

They developed molecules with controllable movements, which can perform a task when energy is added.

The process began with Sauvage in 1983, when he linked two ring-shaped molecules together to form a chain, called a “catenane”, enabling them to be linked in a freer mechanical bond.

For a machine to be able to perform a task it must consist of parts that can move relative to each other – made possible by the two interlocked rings.

In 1991 Stoddart developed arotaxane by threading a molecular

ring onto a thin molecular axle, showing that the ring was able to move along the axle, and Feringa was the first person to develop a molecular motor; in 1999 he got a molecular rotor blade to spin continually in the same direction. Using molecular motors, he has rotated a glass cylinder that is 10,000 times bigger than the motor and also designed a nanocar.

The academy described this

development as being at the same stage as the electric motor was in the 1830s – scientists were unaware that the cranks and wheels they were refining would lead to washing machines, fans and food processors.

In the future, think of these in terms of nanomachines and microrobots, so tiny they will be able to enter your blood stream to find cancer cells, described Feringa.

The trio win the Nobel Prize ‘for the design and synthesis of molecular machines’.

molecular chassis

rotating molecular motor

Illustration: ©Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

mechanism, phase transition, that makes superconductivity disappear at higher temperatures.

Then, in the 1980s, Thouless was able to explain a previous experiment with very thin electrically conducting layers in which conductance was precisely measured as integer steps, showing that these integers were topological in their nature.

Meanwhile, Haldane discovered how topological concepts can be used to understand the properties of chains of small magnets found in some materials.

Thanks to this, many topological phases have been revealed, not

Illustration: ©Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

only in thin layers and threads, but also in ordinary three-dimensional materials. In the past 10 years, this area has boosted frontline research in condensed matter physics, not

Feringa, Sauvage and Stoddart win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2016.

0,7 nm

Illustration: ©Johan Jarnestad/ The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Illustration: ©Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

least because of the hope that topological materials could be used in new generations of electronics and superconductors, or in future quantum computers. u

This branch of mathematics is interested in properties that change step-wise, like the number of holes in the above objects.

Topology was the key to the Nobel Laureates’ discoveries, and it explains why electrical conductivity inside thin layers changes in integer steps.

Photo by Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

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F E A T U R E

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SPIDER – THE HYBRID AIRSHIP’S BEST FRIEND Meet Lockheed Martin’s one-of-a-kind robot that is committed to protecting the cargo-hauling ship of the skies, the Hybrid Airship.

F

or years, teams of five to 10 people have used bright lights to search every inch of airship envelopes to locate and patch tiny pinholes found during final assembly and major maintenance operations.

This was tedious, slow and costly.

A small team of engineers at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works is the brains behind Spider – an autonomous robot that locates and patches pinholes found in the Hybrid Airship’s envelope.

For those who are unfamiliar,

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Invention Asia

the Hybrid Airship can affordably deliver heavy cargo and personnel to virtually anywhere, which will take it to remote locations all over the world.

When production begins, six Spider robots will spend their days roaming the Hybrid Airship in parallel with the final assembly process. The Spiders’ support will help reduce the amount of man-hours needed to complete the long and tedious task of inspecting the “envelope”.

Not only will Spiders locate

these tiny holes, but they will also securely patch the holes from inside the envelope. The six Spiders will be able to scan, locate and patch tiny pinholes on 75% of the envelope in just one day. That’s a nearly 80% reduction of labour hours required for today’s manual process.

How exactly will they manage to locate and repair these holes so quickly? Well that’s a secret of the Skunk Works. There is a central computer station, a central hub, that makes sure Spiders scan the envelope in an efficient manner.

This central intelligence system will allow them to keep a historical log of where they have located and patched the pinholes over the course of the airship’s 30-year life.

The Spider team takes pride in knowing that it will be able to quickly send the airship on its next mission. The Hybrid Airship may be off transporting cargo and personnel to a remote mining site in Alaska, supporting geologic surveys in South America, drilling sites in the Pacific islands, or delivering emergency supplies and personnel in Africa, but robots will be on standby to repair the airship.

It may be an unlikely friendship, a Spider and an airship, but both creations have the same essential mission to ensure Hybrid Airships provide an affordable, efficient and environmentally sound solution for remote cargo operations around the world.

THE SCIENCE BEHIND SPIDER Since Galileo’s first gazing gazing at the stars atop a mountain in Italy, to modernday astronomers who can see billions of miles into space, the general design of a telescope has

pretty much remained the same. In fact, even if you’re looking at the stars using only the light-sensitive cells in your eyes, the image-forming process works the same way.

From space, the need for higherresolution imaging to resolve far away objects requires bigger and bigger telescopes to the point where the size,

weight and power of the telescope can completely dominate a system.

Plus, it’s also really expensive to put big, heavy objects in space.

In order to cut costs on future telescopes, scientists at Lockheed Martin are taking a new look at how to process imagery by using a technique called interferometry.

Interferometry takes in what you’re seeing, photons, using a thin array of tiny lenses that replaces the large, bulky mirrors or lenses in traditional telescopes. Large-scale interferometer arrays, located in observatories around the world, are used to collect data over long periods of time to form ultra-high-resolution images of objects in space.

Spider flips that concept, staring instead from space, and trading person-sized telescopes and complex combining optics for hundreds or thousands of tiny lenses that feed silicon-chip photonic integrated circuits to combine the light in pairs to form interference fringes.

The amplitude and phase of the fringes are measured and used to construct a digital image. This provides an increase in resolution while maintaining a thin disk. It’s how Lockheed Martin’s imaging technology, called Segmented Planar Imaging Detector for Electro-optical Reconnaissance (or Spider), can reduce the size, weight and power needs for telescopes by 10 to 100 times. u

Invention Asia

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MINDS

ACTIVITY CALENDAR JANUARY 2017 Commercialization Workshop

MARCH 2017 IP Protection Workshop For Food Science Technology

9 NOVEMBER 2017 Global Minds Camp

FEBRUARY 2017 2017 Bangkok International Intellectual Property, Invention, Innovation and Technology Exposition (IPITEx) in Thailand Inventors’ Day

MAY 2017 • ITEX 2017 • ACE 2016 Entry Exhibition • Soft Launching of 30th Anniversary Commemorative Book

MARCH 2017 The 37th Beijing Youth Science Creation Competition (BYSCC)

JULY 2017 Design Thinking Workshop for SME

AUGUST 2017 ACE 2017 Workshop AUGUST 2017 Nobel Laureate Forum

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