We make the near future happen
About Us
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About Us
We make the near future happen
Backcasting from the near future design by SINIC, a technology management style inherited in OMRON Group from the time of the founder Kazuma Tateishi.
For that OMRON SINIC X (OSX) was born in 2018 at Hongo, Tokyo, with the mission of bringing in the innovative technologies needed by society in the near future and creating a concrete architecture for their realization.
At OSX, we will promptly grasp the signs of transitions in the world and social issues, and create essential research questions and attractive research issues that will be the bottleneck of the solution. We will proceed with research based on the belief that by sharing research issues rooted in social issues in the community consists of academia and industry, we can achieve a great impact on moving society and innovating people's lifestyles.
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SINIC DIAGRAM (1970, Tateishi)
Motivation at OSX Launch
OSX was originally being prepared with the idea of 窶銀"establishing an AI research base." However, as the discussions were repeated within OMRON, the concept was brushed up, and the concept developed into a research base for designing the near future, envisioning the technologies necessary for that purpose, and creating core innovative technologies. Originally, OMRON has frontieered numerous innovations such as signal control systems and automatic ticket gates, leading the world by new solutions, based on the theory of future prediction (SINIC) established by the founder. The founder called this "creation of social needs" and it is still rooted in OMRON's corporate philosophy. The organization OSX was founded with the desire to update the future prediction method called SINIC to suit the new era and make it a unique base for creating social needs based on innovative technology.
However, it is extremely difficult for OMRON members, including myself, to anticipate technological evolution in the decades ahead, which is discontinuous and increasing in complexity, and to design the near future. Therefore, I came to have the desire to design OSX as "Dejima", the place for open innovation and the near future of innovation technology starting point while inviting excellent researchers and experts from domestic and interenational community.
What OSX is aiming for in the future
"Near-future design" is not just dreaming of the future. OSX shows both a concrete picture of the future and the path towards its realization. Currently, the intersection of AI, robotics, sensing, etc. is at the center of attention to, but in SINIC theory, in order to realize the "integration of humans and machines", the technical areas that need to be deepened are expanding steadily, such as communication between humans and machines, machine embodiments and the handling of knowledge and information flow. I would like to deepen discussions with people outside the company rather than keeping it closed inside the company.
In terms of human resources, we would like to continue to expand diversity more than ever. Two years after its establishment, researchers from more than 10 countries have already come to OSX in the form of internships and have worked hard together. In the future, we plan to invite even more diverse human resources from all over the world to create seeds for innovative technologies.
Company philosophy
We are committed to putting the OMRON Group's corporate philosophy into practice in modern ways and are tackling new challenges every day. There are many points that small and inexperienced companies cannot reach, but steadily continuing with each and every step is our challenge.
In a culture that values freedom and diversity, engineers and researchers with momentum and strong skills understand each other's strengths and weaknesses, utilize and complement each other, take on challenges from the future, and enhance our presence. We aim to be a platform that raises spirits, creates businesses, and grows individuals.
Research philosophy
| Future-oriented | Each of our diverse research topics aims to be one piece of the puzzle to create the society of the future. |
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| Social-issue-oriented | We will consider what the near future should be, the major social issues it is rooted in, and determine the obstacles in its way. |
| Impact-oriented | Then, among these obstacles we identify the underlying, essential technical issues that have wide-ranging influence, and consider how to solve them. In this way, we aim to achieve both social and research impact. |
| Open-minded | To find an optimal solution, often it is not a good idea to keep a problem to yourself. We often connect with collaborators who work on similar problems and solve them with the power of the community. |
| Trade-on minded | We aim to improve the technology by raising the trade-off curve one step by balancing the two conflicting properties, rather than adjusting the trade-off. |
| Interdisciplinary field emphasis | We aim at innovations by integrating interdisciplinary fields. |
Research domains
OMRON Group is advancing R&D to deepen the concept of cooperation and harmony between humans and machines. At OSX, in order to clarify and embody this concept, we are conducting research to bring humans and machines, as well as humans and humans, by realizing the following technologies:
- Smart learning:Knowledge Computing Group
- Smart operation:Robotics Group
- Smart connection:Integrated Interaction Group
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- Knowledge Computing Group
- The advancement of technology fundamentally relies on people sharing knowledge and experiences, and reusing them collaboratively. One of our missions is to shape "smart learning" in the near-future society by extending this endeavor into human-machine and machine-machine interactions through computational technologies. To this end, we conduct research focused on technologies to accurately interpret information accumulated in various data formats, transform it into easily reusable representations, and foster insights.
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- Robotics Group
- Our mission is to create "smart operation" robots with intelligence capable of flexible adaptation and bodies easily accepted by society to promote the societal implementation of robots. To achieve this mission, we conduct research from both learning control and hardware perspectives, mainly focusing on robot learning that enables robots to complete various tasks through trial-and-error or minimal instructions from humans, as well as on soft and lightweight robot designs that allow safe interaction with the environment and coexistence with humans.
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- Integrated Interaction Group
- By integrating various research fields centered on AI technology, we have a mission to design new relationships and better conditions between human-machine, human-human, and machine-machine, and propose technologies and mechanisms to solve social problems and satisfy latent needs. We are engaged in research to "smartly connect" humans and machines, such as technologies to adapt robots to people's living spaces, to augment and support communication between people, and to plan actions for robots to work together cooperatively.
COMPANY Corporate Information
| Company name | OMRON SINIC X Corporation |
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| Address | Nagase Hongo Building 3F 5-24-5 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku Tokyo-to, Japan 113-0033 |
| President and CEO | Masaki Suwa |
| Incorporated | Feb 1,2018 |
| Capital | JPY 1.3 billion |
| Business Overview | Near-future designs and innovation realization |
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