Infineon Taiwan Managing Director Chen Zhihao (left) and Taiwan Guardian Alliance Social Welfare Association Chairman Yu Zilian (right) jointly performed the donation ceremony. (provided by the company)
Facing an ever-changing fire scene, frontline firefighters often have to make quick judgments with limited information. In order to reduce the gap in disaster relief information, Infineon Technologies Taiwan once again joined hands with the Taiwan Guardian Alliance Social Welfare Association to connect firefighting and academic research teams to promote smart firefighting applications. Through technologies such as Edge AI, image recognition and computer vision ranging, it helps to identify flames, smoke, people and distance information, allowing technology to move from "visible" to "understandable", providing more real-time fire scene clues to the front line and reducing unknown risks.
The recipients include the Pingtung County Government Fire Department, Taitung County Fire Department, Lianjiang County Fire Department, and Kaohsiung City Government Fire Department Special Search Brigade. They represent remote areas, mountainous areas, outlying islands, and urban complex disasters and special search and rescue sites and task requirements, and participate in application testing and field verification. The Guardian Alliance collaborates with industry, government and academia, and the Fire Department of the Ministry of the Interior provides site and fire scene image data. National Yang-Ming Chiao Tung University and National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology develop algorithms and integrate and deploy Edge AI systems.
This "Love on the Frontline - Visible Guardians" public welfare project was organized by Infineon, as a provider of public welfare and technical resources, and the Guardian Alliance to jointly create a PSOC developed by Infineon specifically for edge AI applications. The Edge microcontroller, XENSIV millimeter-wave radar sensor, AIROC Bluetooth/Wi-Fi wireless communication technology and the AI fire scene sensing module with an external lens can provide image anti-interference recognition under extreme light sources, identify flames, smoke and the presence of people, and use computer vision ranging to provide distance information about fire points and people, allowing firefighters and command units to quickly grasp on-site information. This is the first AI perception module developed for mobile and rapidly changing disaster relief sites. It can be plugged into existing disaster relief vehicles such as fire trucks, firefighting robots, and drones to accompany firefighters on the front line of disaster relief. Since the module uses completely ground-side computing, even if the fire scene is disconnected from the Internet, the system can still operate and transmit data as usual.
Chen Zhihao, managing director of Infineon Taiwan, said that semiconductor technology is becoming an important enabler behind many key applications, ranging from AI data centers to autonomous vehicle driving, and can play its value. In the field of fire safety, we have also seen the possibility of technology helping front-line personnel reduce unknown risks. This time, Infineon provides the core semiconductor technology for sensing and computing, and integrates Edge AI image recognition, computer vision ranging, and millimeter-wave radar sensing into the same development architecture. It hopes to allow the technology to enter environments that are inaccessible to humans, assist in investigating the scene, obtain key information, and provide more clues and guarantees for firefighters. At the same time, it also improves the efficiency of disaster relief through human-machine collaboration. I am very happy to join hands with the Guardian Alliance again to help us better understand the actual needs and application scenarios of the fire front line. Infineon will also continue to deepen its presence in Taiwan, leverage the value of semiconductor technology, and fulfill its corporate mission of making life more convenient, safer, and more environmentally friendly.
Yu Zilian, chairman of the Guardian Alliance, said that existing fire detection and warning technologies are mostly developed for a single problem or a fixed site. However, real disaster relief sites are often highly mobile and change rapidly, and they also need technological support that can be flexibly deployed according to mission needs. Thanks to Infineon's continued attention and investment in the field of firefighting and disaster relief, this AI perception module, which is based on the needs of front-line mobility, has a streamlined size and excellent sensing, computing and transmission performance, and can be quickly and massively deployed on existing disaster relief vehicles. Through edge AI, real-time integration, identification and transformation of on-site information on the device side allow machines to move from "visible" to "understandable", helping firefighters grasp key information faster at disaster relief sites where every second counts, improving response efficiency and disaster relief safety.
