Konica Minolta, Inc. announced that the company has completed the construction and opened the Innovation Garden OSAKA Centre.
The Innovation Garden OSAKA Centre is Konica Minolta’s new R&D centre (Takatsuki Site) near Japan Railway’s Takatsuki Station, in which the company wants to create businesses and develop technologies on a full scale by leveraging imaging IoT/AI and high-speed processing technologies, which are the strengths of the company.
In August 2019, Konica Minolta opened the Innovation Garden OSAKA Front, an open innovation centre for the development of imaging IoT in Japan’s western Kansai region, in Umeda, Osaka. The Innovation Garden OSAKA Centre serves as a hub for imaging IoT/AI development and business creation in the Kansai area. Core human resources of imaging IoT/AI technology will be assigned to these centres to further promote the development of human resources.
Konica Minolta said it will create various solutions that enable contactless, remote, and real-time response through imaging IoT/AI technology at Innovation Garden OSAKA, which is the collective term for the two centres. Konica Minolta added it remains committed to contributing to the evolution of human society by offering products and solutions that help create a safe and secure environment around the world for working professionals and the general public in the new normal, thereby achieving sustainable business growth.
The centre features a hybrid 5G development environment, for both local 5G through co-creation with NEC and carrier 5G through co-creation with KDDI. This 5G environment using both local 5G and carrier 5G is expected to reduce the load on an entire system and significantly improve the performance. In this development environment, field operational tests will be conducted on the use of 5G to simulate the general office environment and manufacturing sites such as factories, and the linkage between indoors and outdoors. Demonstrations will also be conducted to verify the advantages of local 5G and carrier 5G.
The Open Lab is intended to promote industry-academia cooperation and open innovation and will also feature a hybrid 5G development environment. Konica Minolta said that the lab will be made available for partner companies in various industries and research institutes, such as universities, as a place for joint experiments toward practical application by gathering diverse knowledge and technologies.
Konica Minolta is also looking to promote FORXAI which is an imaging IoT platform for accelerating digital transformation (DX) with customers and partners. Technology to visualize the invisible, which is derived from the photo film and camera business, the founding business of Konica Minolta, will be developed and offered.
