Six DOST-ASTI developed technologies presented during the DOST-ASTI Technology Transfer Webinar
27 November 2020 - The DOST Advanced Science and Technology Institute (DOST-ASTI) held a Technology Transfer virtual webinar that talks about the six ASTI developed technologies. These are the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System, Kooha Application, Gul.ai Technology, AI4Mapping, MASID Weather Stations, and the PhilSensors website. This webinar aims to highlight ASTI's new technologies ready for commercialization in 2020 through a series of presentations and discussions by the respective project managers and researchers from DOST-ASTI.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System
The Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System was presented by Ms. Angelica Paz from Knowledge Management Division (KMD). ERP system is developed to help government offices improve their productivity and efficiency through the different modules in the system.
Government units can be used the ERP system to manage administrative documents such as procurements, personnel records, knowledge assets, repair, and maintenance, etc. It can also be used to manage HR files such as daily time records, leaves, and pass slips. The ERP system to ease the amount of time spent on clerical and organizational tasks. It also provides integration of the system across all the processes in the unit/agency. Through this integration, government units can establish their transparency, as well as decrease the chances of human error and document loss.
Kooha App
Ms. Roxanne Aviñante from the Computer Software Division (CSD) presented the newly developed Kooha App, a social sensing network application capable of real-time participatory photo and sensor data collection through smartphones. The targeted users for this application are students, researchers, and scientists who are interested in using sensor data for research purposes, policymaking, business, environment and health, and transportation and telecommunication.
Through Kooha app, sensor data from images captured are shared to the public for further study. This mitigates the insufficiency of available data for science and analytics in the Philippines. Some sensor data collected are those available in the user’s smartphone such as location, temperature, gravity, and light to name a few. These are embedded in the image captured which will go through the servers for the Kooha App via a research network that will be available through API Gateway or web services.
Gul.ai Technology
Gul.ai technology is an AI and IoT-Assisted Automated Phenotyping Platform presented by Mr. Rother Jay Copino of CSD. The technology aims to promote Crop Science and ICT among youth by applying Internet-of-Things (IoT) technology in plant phenotyping or collecting and distinguishing significant characteristics in different crops being studied through Experiment Platform Unit (Plant Box).
Gul.ai technology utilizes AI and IoT to implement statistical methods in analyzing multivariate data, such as temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide level, pH level, light intensity, and water level, from the platform. These data are monitored through an indoor microscale plant growing system or plant box. These data can be used to generate a plant growth model which will help researchers and farmers develop a more efficient process and system in growing crops.
AI4Mapping
Engr. Roel De La Cruz from DATOS Project covered the discussion on earth observation and using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and satellite images for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Agriculture. The DATOS team also developed a software for training and object detection of AI models to accelerate an AI-enabled mapping.
This software makes it easier for the user to train AI model because all processes such as time series analysis (CPU Processing) where voice recognition is used, and object detection (GPU Processing) which is executed like the multi-layer perceptron (MLP) model, are already included in the system. Since it is also important that the users are knowledgeable about how to create proper training data to run the software, the DATOS Project provides Artificial Intelligence for Earth Observation (AI4EO) workshop to its stakeholders.
Meteorological Data Acquisition Stations for Information Dissemination (MASID)
The MASID technologies was presented by Ms. Jasmin Jane Yabut from the Embedded Systems Group. It features several weather monitoring stations that were deployed and designed to automatically gather on-site weather data and to alert the community during an approaching disaster. Among these weather stations are Automated Rain Gauge (ARG) Station, Automated Water Level Monitoring Station (WLMS), Automated Weather Station (AWS), Agrometeorological Station (Agromet), Disaster Early Warning System (Flood Alerting Station), and Tsunami Early Warning System (TEWS Alerting Station). As of 2017, around 2,000 of these stations were deployed by DOST-ASTI.
DOST-ASTI researchers also created and designed a data logger which is commonly known as Advanced Remote Data Acquisition Unit (arQTM). It is used for the collection of data from the automated weather stations. The data gathered from stations can be accessed through the Philsensor website of DOST-ASTI. The Philsensor website presents visualized data for efficient analysis, as well as some simple analysis.
Philsensors Website
DOST-ASTI’s Philsensors website was presented by Ms. Christine Shamah Cureg, from the Visualization Team of the agency. The Philsensors website is a platform for accessing historical and near real-time raw data gathered from the various weather stations in the Philippines.
Ms. Cureg discussed the accessibility of the Philsensors website, such as the map, legends designated for different weather stations, toggle buttons, search panels for the different weather stations, and popup panels for the graphical view of the station’s raw data. Data visualization presents a graphical and tabular view of the weather station’s information (elevation, coordinates, sensor type, status), duration/range of data gathered, historical and real-time data.
Technology Transfer Collaboration, and Business Opportunities in ASTI
DOST-ASTI’s Ms. Maria Irene Amatorio gave a short briefer about the Technology Licensing Office (TLO) of the agency. TLO is in charge of protecting the intellectual assets of DOST-ASTI, as well as managing technology transfer by means of public goods, government extension, and commercialization. It is also responsible for the coordination of end-user license agreements (EULAs), research agreements (Ras), memorandum agreements, collaborative research agreements (CRAs), etc. In addition, they conduct business negotiations, meetings with stakeholders, and other similar events and engagements. Ms. Amatorio also discussed the general procedure of technology licensing, from research ideas to drafting of the agreements such as EULAs and NDAs.
After the presentations from the ASTI researchers and the TLO, some licensees from Alexan Commercial and Jharkha Construction shared their testimonials with the technologies from MASID.
The DOST-ASTI Technology Transfer virtual webinar is one of DOST-ASTI's multiple virtual events lined up in celebration of the 2020 National Science & Technology Week (NSTW).
For more information about DOST-ASTI's projects, visit https://asti.dost.gov.ph/. To join the virtual NSTW Celebration, register now at https://nstw2020.dost.gov.ph/.