Tour of NEC Corporation site held
On Wednesday, July 1, 2015, a tour was held of the NEC Central Research Laboratories (Tamagawa Plant) as part of the special course in the Ph.D. Program in Empowerment Informatics (EMP) Business and Engineering(a basic required course). This tour was organized by Prof. Masato Tsukada (a lead researcher with the Information and Media Processing Labs of NEC Corporation), responsible for off-campus classes. Sixteen EMP students took part in the tour.
As part of Business and Engineering class we had the pleasure of attending the NEC building in Kanagawa. The day began with a briefing of the NEC company vision and an overview of some of their current projects. This was a great opportunity to understand the goals of the company and get a feel of how they operate. It was also a very informative overview of how they transform a research idea into a product, which was very helpful to me as an entrepreneur.
After the initial briefing, we split into 3 groups and were invited to have a look at some of the research of the NEC representatives. The first demonstration showed a project which attempted to monitor and enhance the growth rate of plants in a miniature greenhouse. It was very interesting to see how the use of energy and technology can accelerate the process of growth. The second demonstration was about the use of a specialized smart phone app to recognize objects in daily life. It uses an alternative method to SIFT to classify objects and build a feature based library. The applications for this technology on a portable scale are limitless and can prove to be highly useful in daily life. The third demonstration was another smart phone application, but this one in particular is used to recognize and classify different types of nails and bolts used in construction. This is a seamless method of analyzing structures in our environment and can supplement the building process. The final demonstration was a camera based system which could eliminate fog from images and videos. This technology is very beneficial in detection and tracking of humans or situational awareness based applications when harsh weather conditions are present.
After the demonstrations were complete, we all gathered in the meeting room once more for the final discussion. It was a great opportunity to discuss with the NEC representatives their own visions for these next level technologies. At the conclusion of the discussion, one thing seemed very apparent between the representatives of NEC and the students of Tsukuba University, we all had the common vision of developing technology to improve the quality of living and daily activities in society. A highly informative day, incredibly interesting demonstrations and a mutual vision, made for a very enjoyable business trip.
