GROUND Inc. (headquartered in Koto-ku, Tokyo: Hiramoto Miyata, CEO; hereinafter “GROUND”), a Japanese leader in the field of LogiTech® *2, is pleased to announce that on Wed, March 27, 2019, it entered into a basic agreement on a joint venture with Indian college Mahindra Ecole Centrale (located in Telangana, India; Dr. Yajulu Medury, Director; hereinafter “MEC”). As part of the agreement, the two parties will conduct joint research into Field Programmable Gate Arrays *1 (“FPGA”), which have attracted attention in recent years as AI semiconductor solutions, with the aim of accelerating the development of the Dynamic Allocation System® *2 (“DyAS® *2) , AI logistics software that GROUND, is currently developing in-house.
With electronic commerce (“EC”) developing into social infrastructure that supports people’s lives due to the widespread adoption of Internet-based purchases, flea market apps and so on, the volume of transactions has increased, while the diversification of consumer purchasing experiences has also accelerated due to the concurrence of brick-and-mortar and EC stores. As a result, the role of logistics in supporting EC behind the scenes to ensure that products are delivered accurately and without delay has also been forced to change. This has created a growing need to optimize distribution warehouses to handle small-lot, high-frequency deliveries and immediate deliveries, and to optimize complex combinations of various factors involved with purchasing scenarios and distribution sites in ways that are tailored to consumer needs.
As a solution to help solve these challenges, GROUND is pursuing the development of the DyAS® , AI logistics software, which is designed to optimize and adjust inventory arrangement and resources (people, robots, etc.) within a warehouse. GROUND is now focusing on FPGAs as the semiconductor solutions to perform high-speed processing of the AI deep learning that is at the core of DyAS®, and under its cooperation with MEC, GROUND will promote the application of this basic research for DyAS.
Takatsugu Kobayashi, General Manager / Chief Digital Officer / Head of Global Innovation at GROUND Inc., says: “We are delighted that we have the opportunity to work with Mahindra Ecole Centrale on joint research into speeding up the processing of combination optimization using FPGAs. This joint research is an endeavor of profound significance to apply FPGAs, whose practical utilization is still in its infancy, for the fields of logistics and distribution. In addition to performing GPU-based parallel processing, by also using new computer chips to perform CPU-optimized computations in parallel, we will achieve fast processing speeds even working with large volumes of combination data, and we hope to leverage this for faster logistics handling.”
Dr.Arya K. Bhattacharya, Dean Research at Mahindra Ecole Centrale says: “It is a matter of delight for us to engage in this joint development with GROUND Inc. of a niche technology that will be of value to the company along its line of business in logistics and distribution. This manifests our keen desire to actively interact with different companies and contribute to their growth in areas at the frontiers of global technology.” We look forward to work together with GROUND Inc. in further developments along its lines of business.
GROUND will continue to actively pursue global collaboration between industry and academia and other R&D endeavors related to cutting-edge technologies such as AI and robotics as it strives to create new value for the logistics industry using technology and contribute to the industry’s transformation.
*1: An integrated circuit whose circuits can be re-written after manufacturing
*2: “Intelligent Logistics®”, “LogiTech®”, “Dynamic Allocation System®” and “DyAS ®” are registered trademarks or trademarks of GROUND Inc.
■ About GROUND Inc. https://en.groundinc.co.jp/
GROUND provides innovative solutions based on the world’s most advanced technologies in the logistics and distribution industry (LogiTech® *2), aiming to achieve Intelligent Logistics® *2, its original concept that applies the latest technologies such as AI and robotics.
■ About Mahindra Ecole Centrale https://www.mahindraecolecentrale.edu.in/index.html
Mahindra Ecole Centrale (MEC) is a higher education institution based at Hyderabad, India. This was formed by collaboration between the Mahindra Corporate Group of India and the Ecole Centrale Group of Institutions of France, in the year 2014.
The first batch of graduate engineers have passed out from MEC this year in 2018. MEC aspires to international standards in teaching and research. It has a unique system of education created by adapting French Ecole Centrale pedagogical values to Indian conditions. It lays great importance to research, and doing external projects for Indian and foreign sponsors and industries, with a mix of both applied and fundamental development activities.
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