Speech by Minister Josephine Teo at the Launch of the AUMOVIO-NTU Corporate Lab

Prof Lam Khin Yong, Vice President (Industry), NTU Singapore

Mr Lo Kien Foh, President and CEO, AUMOVIO Singapore

Distinguished guests

1. Good afternoon and thank you for inviting me.

2. At Budget this year, PM Wong spoke about artificial intelligence and the need to go beyond individual pilots. He said we must, instead, organise at a national level and move with speed and scale. That is why he is personally chairing the new National AI Council, and why we are launching the national AI Missions in four key sectors: advanced manufacturing, connectivity, healthcare and financial services.

3. What does “going beyond pilots” actually mean? Well, it means setting goals that are genuinely hard to achieve, that compel us to fundamentally rethink how the work is done. It doesn’t mean that small problems are not worth solving – they are, but we cannot be content with shallow applications of a technology but should seriously think about transformative uses.

4. Like halving the time from design to prototype or achieving near-zero defect rates on a final assembly line. These are big ambitious goals that are worthy of our attention, they are not goals that anyone can reach through incremental improvements or a bit more automation here and there. Entire work processes may need to be re-imagined.

5. We are still working through what these goals look like in each sector. But they share one characteristic: they are stretch goals. That matters, because they force us to ask different questions, bring in different expertise, and find new ways of working.

6. This brings me to why this corporate lab matters. Since it was established in 2019, the team has produced 131 publications, filed 104 patent applications, and secured 10 patent awards. These numbers are impressive on their own, and also reflect an active organisation that is keen to make progress.

7. In the automotive sector, the hardest problems are not always where you expect them. Testing, for instance, is painstaking and unglamorous, but this is where reliability is built or broken. You and I know that as passengers, reliability matters. This lab works on problems like that, across the full range of what a modern vehicle needs to be.

8. Also, a stretch goal on paper does not go very far. However, it can bring the right people to the table.

9. Before this collaboration, AUMOVIO – then known as Continental – was grappling with a familiar challenge. Building reliable software for complex automotive systems is slow, expensive, and gets harder as products grow more sophisticated. They knew that AI could help.

   1. However, developing something that works reliably under real automotive conditions required research depth they could not themselves build overnight. NTU had exactly that expertise.

   2. On the other hand, translating research into solutions that work under real industry pressures requires real-world industrial deployment experience that a university does not have. But AUMOVIO does.

10. NTU and AUMOVIO complement each other well as partners. What has this collaboration produced, besides the achievements that I outlined earlier?

    1. The lab built AI Pathfinder, which automates the testing of vehicle central dashboard interfaces. Up to 1,200 man-hours were saved in a single dashboard release and it is now being piloted with a regional automaker.

    2. Professor Edwin Teo’s team at NTU worked with AUMOVIO to develop new 3-D printed materials that replicate touch sensation and vibration feedback in vehicle components, a compact solution to a problem the automotive industry has long struggled with.

    3. And the lab’s wireless communication research has contributed to the international standard. In other words, innovation from Singapore is shaping how vehicles around the world talk to each other.

11. What is perhaps most significant is how these outcomes were achieved. In most collaborations, business units are brought in at the end to evaluate what researchers produced. Here, AUMOVIO’s business units directly shape the research agenda from the start. The people who will deploy these solutions are involved as these solutions are being designed. The tighter loop produced better results, and of course, from the university’s perspective, this also helps to avoid the valley of death where research findings and discoveries do not eventually make their way into usable products and services demanded by the industry.

12. We hope to see more of such collaborations in our National AI Missions and in our Champions of AI programme.

13. So, let me close with why these collaborations matter beyond this particular corporate lab.

14. When organisations push genuinely hard at real problems, a few things tend to happen.

15. First, they show others what is possible. Many companies are holding back on transformation, not because they are uninterested, but because they are not sure it can be done. The lab's AI fuzzing work is a good example. Through a trial with an automaker in the region, the AI fuzzing tool detected bugs and vulnerabilities much faster than before and uncovered critical vulnerabilities that traditional testing had missed entirely. When other companies see results like that, it changes what they think is possible.

16. Second, such collaborations generate real use cases that bring partners along. I am pleased to witness two signings today - a Letter of Support with AWS, and an MOU with Origgin.

    1. The support of AWS gives the lab access to computing resources that will keep AI research moving.

    2. Origgin will work with the lab to bring technologies to market through startups, spin-offs, and connections to overseas networks.

    3. The lab is also looking to work with local startups like Squareroot8 Technologies, whose quantum security work aligns with its own cybersecurity research.

17. To pursue its ambitions, the lab will engage over 140 researchers, engineers and students across AI, cybersecurity, novel materials, and vehicular communications.

18. I congratulate everyone in the team on today’s launch, and wish you more success in the years ahead. Thank you very much for inviting me.