General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized: "Strengthen major scientific and technological research, strengthen the deep integration of scientific and technological innovation and industrial innovation, actively cultivate new formats, new models and new kinetic energy, and develop new quality productivity according to local conditions." ”
Let scientific and technological achievements move from the laboratory to the production line, and the National Manufacturing Innovation Center plays the role of an innovation highland. In the 29 national manufacturing innovation centers that have been built, the innovation chain, industrial chain, capital chain, talent chain are deeply integrated, the upstream and downstream work closely, the industry-university-research integration and innovation, and the original and disruptive scientific and technological innovation achievements are emerging, accelerating the transformation to real productivity, and providing strong support for promoting new industrialization, building a modern industrial system, and developing new quality productivity.
The reporter of this newspaper walked into the national manufacturing innovation center, asked about the results, talked about the experience, explored the prospects, and saw how to cultivate and grow new industries, new models and new kinetic energy.
-- The editor
To the east, the high-tech campus of the University of Science and Technology of China; To the north, the Hefei Innovation Institute jointly established by the Hefei Municipal Government and the Hefei Institute of Physical Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences - China Sound Valley in Hefei, Anhui Province, is the country's first national industrial base in the field of artificial intelligence, and has settled in more than 2,000 enterprises such as iFLYTEK and Huami Technology, with an annual output value of more than 200 billion yuan.
At the north gate of Sound Valley, the sign of "National Intelligent Speech Innovation Center" is particularly eye-catching. Relying on the local intelligent voice and artificial intelligence industry cluster, the innovation center focuses on the field of intelligent voice to carry out research on key common technologies, and has produced a number of scientific and technological innovation achievements. Here, how to strengthen scientific and technological innovation, especially original and disruptive scientific and technological innovation? How to apply innovation results to industry in a timely manner? The reporter visited the Innovation Center.
Smart unmanned laboratory——
It can be detected 24 hours a day without interruption of intelligent voice interaction
"Hello air conditioning, it's too hot in the house." "Okay, the refrigeration mode has been turned on for you." Human-machine dialogue is increasingly occurring in the home. Compared with home appliances such as refrigerators and washing machines, people have a stronger demand for intelligent voice interaction of air conditioners. However, it is not easy to ensure that the "ears" of the air conditioner are sensitive enough.
"In the past, it was only possible to be in a closed room, where the tester played the sound and observed and recorded the response of the air conditioner." Gao Ru, director of the test center of Shandong Qingdao Haier Air Conditioner Co., Ltd., said that manual testing is not only inefficient, but also difficult to simulate complex use scenarios. In March last year, Gao Ru happened to hear that the National Intelligent Speech Innovation Center was building a smart unmanned laboratory for intelligent voice interaction, so he immediately went to the field to understand the situation.
Entering the smart unmanned laboratory is like being in a professional recording studio, surrounded by sound-absorbing diffusion plates and acrylic hemispheres that adjust the reverberation, and various speakers are distributed among them. "Through reverberation adjustment, it can simulate a sound field environment of 10 square meters to 300 square meters, and the 19 loudspeakers can imitate background noise in a variety of scenes. The 50-square-meter laboratory can restore more than 95% of the voice interaction use scenarios. Li Menghui, development engineer of the public testing service platform of the National Intelligent Speech Innovation Center, introduced that the laboratory can achieve 24-hour uninterrupted intelligent voice interaction detection, relying on the center's millions of corpus, all kinds of voices cover nearly 200 kinds of voices, languages, and accents of all ages and people.
Taking air conditioning detection as an example, the staff only needs to set the relevant parameters, and the intelligent robot can arrive at the designated place and play sound through the bionic artificial mouth. The pickup next to the test bench will automatically recognize the feedback result of the air conditioner. A camera above the lab will take pictures of the display panel of the air conditioner. At the end of the detection task, a detection report is automatically generated to provide feedback on the response success rate, response time, and failure reason.
In cooperation with the center, Haier "replicated" the experimental environment in Qingdao. "Put into use this year. Based on the calculation of 20 seconds for a test, more than 4,000 tests can be completed in a day. Gao Ru said that with the help of the intelligent unmanned laboratory, the air conditioner produced by Haier can not only carry out voice interaction in Mandarin, but also "understand" many local dialects, and some export products have mastered multilingual capabilities.
According to reports, the center is established in the form of "company + alliance", bringing together leading enterprises and scientific research institutions in the field of intelligent voice in China, and the center serves as an engine to drive the collaborative operation of shareholders and alliances. "This model helps to promote cooperation and exchanges between the center and enterprises, and between enterprises, and promotes the application and development of scientific and technological innovation achievements in the manufacturing industry." Wu Jiangzhao, general manager of the National Intelligent Speech Innovation Center, said.
Industrial AI Solution——
The single-station inspection time of the substation is shortened to less than 30 minutes
When a substation equipped with more than 20 10 kV switchgear has abnormal noise, how to quickly identify the fault area? "It's hard to tell the source of the abnormal sound directly by ear, so in the past, you had to check it one by one." Wang Longzhen, an operation and maintenance specialist of State Grid Ma'anshan Power Supply Company, said, "Now the voiceprint recognition device can quickly locate the location of the fault. ”
The so-called voiceprint recognition device is jointly developed by the center, iFLYTEK and State Grid Anhui Electric Power Research Institute. "The center has been exploring how voiceprint technology can be applied to industrial scenarios, and after communication, it was found that Anhui Electric Power Research Institute also has this demand, so it 'hit it off'." Li Jun, vice president of the iFLYTEK Industrial Intelligence Research Institute, said.
The voiceprint recognition device can also determine the cause of the failure. "Our expert technicians join in the R&D to analyze what kind of faults the various sound samples represent, and then train the algorithmic model of the device." Zhang Chenchen, an electric power operation and inspection engineer of Anhui Electric Power Research Institute, said.
Today, the voiceprint recognition device has been applied to more than 40 substations in Zhejiang, Anhui, Guangdong, Ningxia and other places, which can accurately find problems such as partial discharge, short-circuit impact, loose clamps, and abnormal noises of coolers, shorten the inspection time of a single station to less than 30 minutes, and reduce the frequency and safety risks of manual on-site operations.
Voiceprint recognition is just one of the many industrial AI (artificial intelligence) solutions offered by the center. The implementation of various solutions has been accelerated, and new momentum has been gathered for traditional industries.
Huang Wei, the head of the center's industrial AI project, was busy with his colleagues during this time to install intelligent quality inspection equipment for the air-conditioning assembly line in Hefei Haier Industrial Park. "There was a production line that was equipped with intelligent quality inspection equipment, and the results were good, and now it needs to be laid on more production lines." Huang Wei said.
In the past, a worker had to test more than 1,000 air conditioners a day. "When you check your brand logo, you're likely to get eye strain because of repeated viewing." Dai Yongsheng, general manager of Hefei Haier Air Conditioner Co., Ltd., said, "If it is a product with voice interaction function, it also needs workers to issue voice commands. In order to improve the detection efficiency, Dai Yongsheng found the National Intelligent Voice Innovation Center and jointly developed intelligent quality inspection equipment.
The reporter saw at the scene that the intelligent quality inspection equipment was like a semi-enclosed rectangular iron box installed on the production line. When the air conditioner enters from the production line, the internal speaker of the device gives a voice command, and the camera and recording equipment determine whether the response given by the product is correct. Barcode scanners and cameras distributed in other locations will also check information such as trademarks, energy efficiency ratings, and model nameplates. When the product "walks" out of the quality inspection equipment, the test results are displayed in the background.
"The intelligent quality inspection equipment can complete more than 20 quality inspection tasks in 7 categories, such as product functions, voice interaction, and logo appearance, with an accuracy rate of up to 98.5%." Dai Yongsheng introduced that the quality inspection equipment of a production line can complete the testing of more than 4,000 products per day, and it is planned to be fully applied in the company's home appliance production line in the future.
AI Model Fully Managed Cloud Service Platform——
More than 1,000 algorithm models can be put into operation
As a leading enterprise in the field of speech, iFLYTEK has mastered a large number of algorithm models for speech recognition and speech synthesis. "Different languages involve different algorithms, and in the past, each set of algorithms was scattered and implemented, which took a long time and required a large amount of manpower investment, and a lot of repetitive construction and operation and maintenance work was required." Zheng Wei, project director of the AI model fully managed cloud service platform of the National Intelligent Speech Innovation Center, said.
Wu Jiangzhao also agreed: "If an innovative enterprise or scientific research institute wants to implement a certain set of algorithms, it not only needs algorithm engineers, but also engineering framework designers, testers, operation and maintenance personnel, and the support of computing resources. ”
At the beginning of 2020, the center and iFLYTEK's voice cloud platform R&D department jointly developed a fully managed cloud service platform for AI models. The designed algorithm can be imported into it, and the scientific research results can be implemented, and the whole process generally does not take more than two days.
Today, the types of algorithm models hosted by the platform are not limited to the field of intelligent speech. "Just like visiting a supermarket, everyone's needs for natural language understanding, image recognition, voiceprint recognition, etc., can be found on the platform." Wu Jiangzhao said.
The platform provides hosting services for many manufacturers and universities such as SenseTime, Niu Translation, and University of Science and Technology of China, and supports the operation of more than 1,000 algorithm models. The total number of applications connected to the platform exceeds 2 million, covering nearly 4 billion end users cumulatively, and the average daily total service volume exceeds 2 billion.
Focusing on the implementation of innovative achievements, a series of policy measures have been implemented one after another: Hefei Economic and Information Bureau held an industrial integration matchmaking meeting, invited more than 20 key manufacturing enterprises to participate in the meeting, and 6 enterprises initially reached cooperation intentions; Anhui Province issued the "Several Policies for Building a Highland for Innovation and Application of General Artificial Intelligence Industry", proposing to accelerate the application of full-time and global scenarios and build a good industrial ecology.
"With the continuous support of various initiatives, the innovation momentum of the center will continue to increase." Wu Jiangzhao said.
Source: People's Daily
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