In order to attract a large number of talents at home and abroad, accelerate the transformation of economic development mode, and promote the construction of innovative cities and talent special zones, Xiamen formulated and issued the "Double-hundred Plan" in 2010. The city's financial department invested 150 million yuan of talent special fund every year, and planned to introduce 100 overseas high-level talents and 300 leading entrepreneurial talents in 5-10 years.
On Dec. 19, the 8th batch of leading entrepreneurial talents of "double-hundred plan" for introducing high-level talents in Xiamen city was selected. The sci-tech R&D project of MSG — small multi-modal emotional escort cloud intelligent robot "VanBaotong" and Dr. Sun Xiao, the main member of system R&D team, were awarded the leading entrepreneurial talents of "Double-hundred Plan".
Sun Xiao, Ph.D. of the University of Tokushima in Japan, associate professor of Hefei University of Technology and director of the Institute of Emotional Computing, was one of the first batch of students to study abroad under the support of China Scholarship Council and obtained double doctoral degree. He presided over and completed more than 10 national and provincial level horizontal and vertical projects, participated in three national and provincial level projects, and won the CCF-Tencent Rhinoceros Bird Creative Fund award and Wu Wenjun Artificial Intelligence Sci-tech award. With many patents and software copyright, he had published more than 60 scientific research papers.
In 2015, MSG, following the national development trend and the trend of the times, continued to carry out technical innovation and attempt, reached close cooperation with Hefei University of Technology, and joined with the first emotional robot laboratory in China — Anhui Emotion Computing and Advanced Intelligent Machine Key Laboratory. At the same time, Dr. Sun Xiao was employed as the chief R&D expert, forming a perfect production, learning and research system and talent echelon, taking emotion computing as the core technology, giving robots the ability to recognize, understand, express and adapt to people's emotions, and successfully developing a small multi-modal emotion accompaniment intelligent robot — "VanBaotong".
"VanBaotong" had an intelligent "heart" system, with mental health care, multimodal emotional interaction, upgraded intelligence supported by cloud platform, mobile Internet OAO and other innovative functions. With the support of cloud knowledge base, through the massive information command feedback mechanism, its limbs and head can cooperate to complete simple body movements, carry out intelligent learning, and have friendly interaction with people.
As an intelligent robot based on multimodal information, "VanBaotong" can obtain people's real-time emotions and fluctuations, understand consumers' happiness and sorrows, become the best transmitter of people's warmth, and provide different coping strategies for different scenarios to meet various daily needs. The system can be widely used in the fields of pension, health care, education, medical care, safety, etc., with its huge cloud data, data analysis, memory storage and other intelligent functions.
At present, with the increasing awareness of health and pension in China, "VanBaotong" takes psychological and emotional care as the starting point, and carries out health monitoring and daily life assistance for the accompanying objects, which will help to solve the accompanying problems in an aging society.
It was worth mentioning that the project integrated many advanced technologies such as human-computer intelligent conversation, speech emotion recognition, facial expression recognition, and the success rate and accuracy rate of each technology were above 80%. The rich and complete functions greatly surpassed the products of the same type on the market. Its implementation was conducive to breaking the technological monopoly of foreign countries, promoting the development of domestic service robot industry, and expanding to the international market.
With technology supporting development and innovation leading the future, MSG will adhere to the integration of technological innovation and industrial development, carry forward the spirit of innovation, promote the construction of technological personnel team, continuously improve the level of technological innovation and create a better life.