Hong Kong Industrial Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Centre

Elevating the Intelligent Manufacturing Development for Hong Kong Industry by AI and Robotics Technologies

AI and robotics will have a fundamental impact on the future of industry and the development of advanced manufacturing. Leveraging Hong Kong's advantages in global talent attraction, strategic location, and intellectual property protection, the Hong Kong Industrial Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Centre, known as “FLAIR”, focuses on the applied research and development (R&D) of industrial AI and robotics in order to boost the re-industrialisation and transformation efforts of the city.

Through collaboration with RWTH Aachen Campus - one of the world-renowned research ecosystems, FLAIR will facilitate high value-added intelligent manufacturing of local enterprises to drive transformation in the following areas:

• Digital shadows for distributed manufacturing: manufacturers in the Greater Bay Area face challenges when practicing distributed manufacturing. New technologies will allow virtual representation of production processes, including data on the machines, process, and product data and quality, to be managed by computers, enabling automated reasoning to steer production remotely with AI-based self- optimisation.
• Flexible production: manufacturers in the region are pursuing fast production changes with short lead times to satisfy a wider range of demands. Using advanced technology, scheduling is optimised to minimise change-over while maximizing automation using production modules.
• Intelligent automation: intelligent automation uses a robot or automation point with camera and machine vision systems to detect which product is entering the area and adjust production modules to perform its tasks accordingly, hence capable of handling different products with little or no change-over time.

Hong Kong Industrial Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Centre (FLAIR)

Hong Kong Industrial Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Centre (FLAIR)

FLAIR researchers

AI and robotics will be used to achieve these goals, including machine vision, AI-based optimisation, time series and signal analysis, process mining, and machine data analysis. Ultimately, various rule-based systems, machine learning, and deep learning approaches will encourage applications for actual production processes to speed transformation of the region’s manufacturing.