BackPolyU and Anker Innovations establish joint laboratory to accelerate commercialisation of smart home products
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) and Anker Innovations signed a collaboration agreement on 21 April to establish the "PolyU-Anker Innovations Joint Laboratory", marking a new milestone in industry-university-research collaboration in artificial intelligence.
The Joint Laboratory will focus on on-device AI technologies, aiming to accelerate the intelligent upgrade of home devices and promote large-scale deployment in the international market.
The signing ceremony was held on the PolyU campus. Witnessed by Prof. Jin-Guang TENG, PolyU President and Mr Steven YANG, Founder and CEO of Anker Innovations, the agreement was signed by Prof. Christopher CHAO, PolyU Senior Vice President (Research and Innovation) and Mr Frank ZHU, President of Smart Home at Anker Innovations.
The collaboration combines PolyU research strengths in AI models, chip-level optimisation and model fusion with Anker Innovations' global smart hardware product and market experience, forming an innovation model of "university research and development + industrial application".
Prof. Jin-Guang Teng said PolyU actively aligns research with societal and industrial needs, and emphasised that research outcomes should be translated into technologies and products that benefit society. He noted that this collaboration will accelerate the commercialisation of PolyU research outcomes and improve the competitiveness of Anker Innovations products in the international market.
Mr Steven Yang said the Joint Laboratory will serve as an accelerator for technological innovation, promoting the widespread application of on-device AI in home hardware scenarios through close collaboration between academic research and product deployment.
The Joint Laboratory will be jointly managed by the PolyU Academy for Artificial Intelligence and Anker Innovations' technical team. Initial research will focus on low-precision training, inference and fusion technologies for on-device models, with goals including better local deployment efficiency, improved cost-effectiveness and stronger privacy protection for smart home users.