TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The winners of the 2021 Edison Awards have been announced, and Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) stood out among nearly 400 nominees, collecting two awards.
The ITRI won a gold prize for its AI-Based High-Density Shuttle Rack Service System and a silver prize in the Primers, Coatings, and Dyes category for the institute’s microbial dye technology, MetabColor.
The AI-Based High-Density Shuttle Rack Service System, which is an automated vertical warehousing system, is designed for space-starved cities. The rack can extend 14 stories, according to an ITRI press release.
The automated warehousing system has been adopted by Yahoo! Taiwan’s first AI automated logistics center, which features the highest shuttle rack storage capacity in the country.
ITRI President Edwin Liu (劉文雄) further explained that the AI-based warehousing system optimizes logistics efficiency to meet the increasing needs of e-commerce, cutting shipping time by 60 percent and helping to increase logistics performance during peak season.
The silver winner, MetabColor, uses modified microbes and fermentation, separation, and purification processes to create natural dyes that are more environmentally friendly than chemical dyes, the ITRI said. The institute has been cooperating with Eclat Textile and Jintex Chemical, leaders in textile manufacturing and specialty chemicals, respectively, on preliminary verification of the technology.
The ITRI is a government-funded applied technology research institute with more than 6,000 employees.
(YouTube, ITRI video)
MetabColor, a pioneering solution that offers an eco-friendly microbial dyes manufacturing process (ITRI photo)
