正文 · AI 翻译
IT Home reported on October 27 that Haier Group announced the launch of construction of the National AI Application Pilot Testing Base for the home and home appliance sector (hereinafter the “pilot testing base”) at a ceremony held today (October 27) in Qingdao.
The base was recommended by the Ministry of Commerce, approved by the National Development and Reform Commission, and is being built by Haier Smart Home. More than 200 industry experts and representatives from home and home appliance companies, AI technology teams, universities and research institutes attended the event.
The base aims to become a globally leading pilot testing base for “next-generation smart home appliances,” moving AI innovation from isolated efforts to a joint industry-wide push, developing reusable shared capabilities, and promoting the large-scale, standardized application of AI.
IT Home note: Pilot testing, or “intermediate-stage testing,” refers to transitional tests that bring new products in the trial production stage into the production process. It involves smaller-scale production trials and optimization after a product has been successfully developed in a laboratory but before it enters formal mass production. The National AI Application Pilot Testing Base (home and home appliance sector) is China’s first national AI application pilot testing base focused on this sector.
Haier Group said AI is being integrated more rapidly into home and home appliance products, use cases and industry chains, but obstacles to its industrial adoption remain.
At the product level, applying AI technology to home appliances and household settings requires multiple stages, including hardware adaptation, feature development, testing in real-world settings and reliability testing. Each stage requires complex testing across different settings.
At the enterprise level, interconnection between different brands, product categories and devices is difficult, and the ability to provide proactive services across spaces and settings is inadequate.
At the industry level, AI applications involve algorithms, computing power, data, talent, standards and security. For companies of different sizes, duplicating investments is costly and time-consuming, making it difficult to achieve synergies.
These issues span multiple companies, types of technology and stages of the industry chain, making them difficult for any single company to resolve independently. Building a pilot testing base for the entire industry is intended to end fragmented efforts, turn “technically feasible” into “reproducible in engineering and ready for mass production,” and support the development of new drivers of consumption.
The pilot testing base will develop five capabilities: product pilot testing, use-case pilot testing, industry pilot testing, large-scale promotion, and standards and security.
On the consumer side, it will promote smarter products and interconnection across brands and devices.
On the industry side, it will promote the adoption of AI in core areas including research and development, manufacturing, supply chains, marketing and services.
Drawing on these capabilities, the base will serve three roles:
A “connector” for industry-chain collaboration: promoting coordination between upstream and downstream participants and addressing poor alignment between needs and technology;
An “accelerator” for turning technological results into applications: linking research efforts with industrial mass production and speeding AI’s transition from research and development to commercialization;
An “incubator” for the deployment of high-quality applications: providing shared services, lowering barriers to innovation and increasing its value through sharing.
At the launch ceremony, the pilot testing base appointed several experts from organizations including the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an Jiaotong University, the China Household Electric Appliance Research Institute and iFlytek. It signed agreements with its first group of ecosystem partners, including China Mobile Communications Group, Huawei and Volcano Engine, and launched an “AI + Consumption” collaborative development initiative to recruit innovators from across society and jointly expand the ecosystem.