Smart City Taiwan Program helps iStaging to experiment remote innovation solutions. iStaging MR solution makes enterprises in the industrial park can take a remote tour guide and a remote investment by using AR/VR technology.
Promoting digital transformation across major industries amid the pandemic: going digital is inevitable for investment promotion and exhibition services
The world has been experiencing the Covid-19 crisis together since 2020. As social distancing becomes the norm to counter the Covid-19 outbreak, there is an interruption to face-to-face interaction. Major industries have been forced to adopt smart technologies as fast as possible to speed up digital transformation, telemedicine, remote exhibition, and online stores amid the pandemic. Smart technologies not only have broken the limitation of physical space but also allow people to establish virtually zero delay interaction from anywhere around the world.
When it comes to major urban development, the pandemic has its toll on the planning, construction, and investment promotion stages of any Industrial parks. Imagine that when cities need technical support from foreign manufacturers, they have to deal with stricter pandemic prevention regulations when entering and leaving some countries. This also puts them at a higher risk of infection. As it normally takes two years at least to finish the phased construction of a industrial park, these foreign manufacturers have to visit the site many times and suffer from the same pain points several times. The exhibition industry shares the same problem. As a result, large-scale seminars, workshops, and exhibitions have gone online so that people can communicate online at home and/or abroad without worrying health risks when travelling.
AR, VR, MR technologies have become key solutions in the metaverse. They not only help narrow the gap between remote experience and face-to-face interaction but also allow people to experience immersive virtual environments.
The Smart City Taiwan Program helps enterprises to experiment remote innovation solutions: iStaging MR solution
Prior to the Covid-19 outbreak, many countries around the world started implementing smart city plans which sped up the commercialization of AR, VR, and MR technologies over the years. These technologies have become increasingly popular across various industries during the pandemic. This is also what happened in Taiwan.
While the Industrial Development Bureau (IDB) of Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs (MoEA) have promoted the Smart City Taiwan Program, the central government and local governments have also taken advantage of Taiwan's high-tech industries. Together, they have promoted six areas concerning people's livelihood, including health, governance/safety, tourism/retail, agriculture, education and transportation. Ultimately, they aim to assisting enterprises to obtain field test opportunities and jointly develop innovative applications and solutions to address local needs.
In the smart retail industry, Taiwan is striving to utilize AR, VR, and MR technologies to address issues facing enterprises today. When it comes to brick-and-mortar investment promotions, conferences, and exhibitions, these emerging technologies can help enterprises reduce the communication gap and mobility costs.
The Smart City Taiwan Program has assisted iStaging, a Taiwanese AR and VR solution provider, to conduct innovative application trials using its MR solution. On top of that, the IDB has also cooperated with the Taoyuan City government to utilize the Asia Silicon Valley Development Agency (ASVDA) Innovation R&D Center, Andong Youth Start-up Hub, and Hutoushan Innovation Hub to provide application fields for iStaging's MR solution during the planning, construction, and investment promotion stages of a industrial park.
Seeing is Believing: remote tour guide and digital integration enable zero gap connectivity during the planning, construction, and investment promotion stages of a industrial park
iStaging is an AR and VR solution provider in Taiwan. The company's MR solution allows any industrial park to provide online visitors an immersive experience of the future surroundings during the planning stage.
During the construction stage, the VR solution enables the contractor to conduct the construction progress on-site monitoring with a presentation system based on the integration of AR solution. AR and VR can help keep track of construction progress and establish a digital material bank to centralize the management of building materials in the form of cloud services. This allows the information of any industrial park to be digitally integrated and processed and thus accelerates the implementation of the construction.
During the investment promotion stage, AR simulates the actual placement of furniture objects in the virtual space, thereby saving decoration costs due to repeated adjustments. With the unmanly tour guide design by using AR and VR technology, new firms stationed at the industrial parks can then use the same tour guide services to help them save time and efforts.
These firms can also use the VR solution provided by iStaging to display their services and products to potential buyers in the virtual booth and conduct one-to-one and/or one-to-many matching.
Metaverse wave sweeps the world: iStaging allows online visitors to create virtual avatars while reshaping remote viewing experiences
In addition to the MR solution, iStaging focuses on offering virtual booth support and virtual exhibition services. With dedicated AR and VR solutions, the company provides support for four vertical fields, including real estate, retail, arts & travel, import and export. Meanwhile, iStaging has proven track records with reliability trusted by major brands such as AECOM, RE/MAX, Yongqing Real Estate Group, LVMH Group, Foncia, YSL, Coty, Mercedes-Benz, Mubadara, etc. The company's solutions are mainly available in North America, Central America, Europe, China, the Middle East, Asia Pacific, etc.
The company provided virtual booth support for over 100 exhibitors of the Taiwan national team at the 2021 CES exhibition. Moreover, they supported LVMH established the virtual showroom and holding various virtual fashion shows. With the growing popularity of the metaverse, iStaging provides online visitors METAmaker solution. The solution not only allows online visitors to browse the manufacturer's product services by VR-based viewing but also to create virtual avatars to walk around booths and watch virtual product launches. The user-friendly interface also allows exhibitors to quickly create virtual booths in just 10 minutes.
To date, there are 320 Taiwanese companies participated in the Smart City Taiwan Program, which not only has incubated 241 smart services across 22 counties and cities in Taiwan but also benefited 8.54 million people in Taiwan. In the future, the Program will continue to assist Taiwanese companies to innovate further and grow abroad.
Author: Xuan-He Yu, MIC, Taiwan Smart City Development Project Office of Industrial Development Bureau, M.O.E.A.
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