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Kiwi Chamber Networking New Zealand

Kiwi Chamber Leadership Breakfast: Dementia Care Robots and NZ Innovation

Photos and notes from the last Kiwi Chamber NZ Leadership Speaker Series breakfast of 2018: Professor Kim Gun-ha on dementia care robots, Dr Pau Medrano-Gracia on Uniservices, and New Zealand innovation.

Kiwi Chamber Leadership Breakfast: Dementia Care Robots and NZ Innovation

Kiwi Chamber, the New Zealand chamber of commerce in Korea, has hosted multiple breakfast events this year, and the final one was today. I was there with a camera as the volunteer photographer. The guest speakers invited were Dr Pau Medrano-Gracia from Auckland University and Professor Kim Gun-ha from Ewha University.

Dementia Care Robots
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Professor Kim, a neurology expert, gave a lecture on “Dementia Care Robots,” including the daily life support function of caring robots to assist dementia patients at home. She talked about robots that can continuously train to enhance recognition capabilities and cognitive training programs that utilize them. She is also co-developing robots designed to care for dementia patients in homes, with support from the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy. The robots developed in this project will undergo evaluation for effectiveness in 2019 and will be operated upon successful completion, leading to the development of dementia-care robots for households.

Dementia Care Robots

Uniservices
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Dr Medrano-Gracia introduced his role within Uniservices as the Business Development Manager. They have partnered with the best minds at the University of Auckland to apply intelligent thinking to ideas that have the potential to change the world.

Upstarters
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New Ideas From A New Place
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If necessity is the mother of invention, it’s no surprise that world-changing ideas are born in New Zealand. Introducing the New Zealand Tech & Innovation Story.

One of the examples on screen was Dotterel’s lightweight drone shroud, made with Revolution Fibres’ acoustic nanofibre to make drones whisper-quiet.

Upstarters slide on Dotterel and Revolution Fibres’ whisper-quiet drones

Photos taken at the event
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I really enjoy volunteering for events with the goal of promoting the relationship between the two countries.

For dark rooms, it’s important to bring a fast lens! Imagine how distracting it is for the audience and speaker if you are trying to compensate for the light by using a large flash! It simply isn’t a good look!