Tokyo Institute of Technology COI Symposium

The 4th Tokyo Institute of Technology COI Symposium was held on November 25th at the Lecture Theater of Ookayama Campus. The venue was attended by about 150 people, not only from companies, universities and COI, but also from townspeople near Tokyo Titech. In this symposium, under the theme of “feel, convey and act“ on the voice of the Earth, business poeple and researchers related to “Silent Voice of the Field“ and “Silent Voice of the Animal“, which are close to social implementation, were invited to give lectures.

At the beginning of the event, President Kazuya Masu of Tokyo Institute of Technology gave a speech as an organizer, and introduced the activities and current status of COI at this center.
Next, Mr. Yutaka Hishiyama, Director of the Policy Bureau of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), explained the policy issues currently being addressed by the government and the social significance of the COI program, which was received as the words of expectation for us.
Then, COI Program Vision 2 Leader Satoshi Koike acknowledged that this COI Center was advocating a new concept in Society 5.0, which considers population growth and global environment, and expected a lecture and discussion at this symposium from that perspective.

Next, Hiroi Project Leader introduces what is the Earth Inclusive Sensing among the concept of this center, and what kind of society this center is aiming for, and then explained the relevance to the theme for the following lectures of this symposium.
The first session is the theme of empathy with Silent Voice in “Ba”, that is a communication filed, and moderator Prof. Miyake of Tokyo Institute of Technology explained the importance of communication in human society. He introduced a real-time visualization system for “Ba”, namely SyncViewer, as a development of inclusive sensing of “Ba”. He also mentioned the possibility that non-verbal communication such as physical synchronization used in this system could create social presence and reliability in cyber-physical systems such as VR.

The first lecture from a company on this theme was given by Mr. Maeda of Murata Manufacturing under the title of ‘New Business Created by Sensing “Ba”’. He explaied about the sensing technology of “Ba” actually performed in the company, in addition to introducing products developed in-house and actual examples used in personnel interviews, etc., and also about digitizing sense and theorizing it.

Next, Mr. Sakai of teamLabo Inc., a world-famous team in digital art production, gave a presentation as an example of feedback from cyber space to physical space related to the theme of “feel, tell, act”. He introduced the activities being carried out in the teamLab, then some of the works that have been produced so far were projected with his explanation of the concept of the work, such as the background and borderless, as an easy-to-understand manner. Video works released not only in Japan but also in New York and Shanghai were displayed on the screen, and we were able to appreciate the beautiful digital art world that appeals to people.

After Session 1, we set up a poster session and exhibited posters from participating companies and edge devices which will be used for the inclusive sensing.

After the break, Session 2 of the theme of empathy with Silent Voice of “Animals” followed. Moderator Associate Prof. Ito of Tokyo Institute of Technology explained about this theme from the perspective of the whole world. It is raised the question of what sustainable dairy / livestock is in terms of dietary protein, livestock feed production, and grazing land, and as a solution, it was suggested that animal welfare, environmentally friendly livestock, and highly efficient livestock farming with IT should be pursued in order to achieve both ethical and economical solutions.

Dr. Yayo of National Agricultural and Food Research Organization (NARO), entitled ‘Thinking about Animal Welfare in Japan’, stated that the world's leading food companies, mainly in Europe and the United States, are trying to brand animal welfare by introducing rules such as cage-free and mandatory grazing. He also explained the challenges and responses to animal welfare in Japan. In response to questions from the venue, he explained there was a lively question and answer session on the relationship between food costs and hygiene.

Next, Mr. Abe, a farming venture company in Obihiro, Hokkaido, presented the current state of livestock in Japan under the title of ‘Developing a market for breeding cattle management system’, and also explained thier IoT and Cloud system used in farmnotes in addition to the management system for raised cattle. He talked about the specific improvement of issues and anxiety that had been dealt with by experience and intuition, and the ranch management system based on data.

Prof. Wakabayashi, research leader of Tokyo Tech COI, summarized issues presented by each speaker, then introduced R & D activities of this research center including IoT/AI edge devices.
Finally, thanks to Executive Vice President Osamu Watanabe of Tokyo Institute of Technology, for his appreciation for the participation of many people, and he stated that he would make every effort as a university for the COI activities and for aimming to the social implementation of this center.

We would like to express our sincere thanks to the speakers who were busy during the symposium, many attendees and everyone involved in the COI.