Under his four-year term as director, Chai Wutiwiwatchai says Nectec is working hard on the three technologies of sensors, artificial intelligence and big data.
The centre is talking to sponsors to create an AI service platform, while working on big data with the government to gather information on every citizen and piece of land in the country.
"With the two major data points of citizens and land, the scheme is well-designed for smart cities, healthcare, agriculture, education and many more areas," Mr Chai says.
Nectec is collaborating with other parties on smart projects such as smart cities, smart agriculture (precision farming), smart factories, e-culture and STEM education (in the fields of science, technology, engineering and maths).
Nectec has been working on two parts, the environmental platform and the traffic and surveillance platform, and its technology for monitoring disasters and disease transmission will be integrated into the disaster management platform.
Smart factories will be linked with the government's Eastern Economic Corridor of Innovation (EECI). Nectec is responsible for research in conjunction with the Institute of Field Robotics, King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi.
Nectec will set up a demonstration centre to showcase technologies involving sensors, the Internet of Things, and a dashboard for management and production -- key components for moving manufacturing from Industry 2.0 to 3.0 and 4.0 and increasing yields with existing machines.
The demo centre of the cyber physical system (CPS) is a pilot plant located at Science Park. It will be a source of consulting and testing for business. Beyond that, it will become part of the manufacturing supply chain.
On STEM education, Nectec has been working a long time and is now developing a massive open online course (MOOC) with a sponsorship by the Office of the Basic Education Commission.
E-learning nationwide is now available to the public at thaimooc.org. Nectec is also working with museums to digitise cultural content.
Mr Chai's mission for his four-year term as director is to integrate digitised e-culture content into the MOOC system.
