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Research paper : Cyber Assist project as service science (H. Nakashima et al.)−119−Synthesiology - English edition Vol.3 No.2 (2010) establishment of venture companies, we initially did not have a plan to do so. However, once we included application to society within our target rangeNote 14), we found it necessary to have alliance with companies to manufacture devices of our design and set them up for use. No company met our specifications. We found it best to run a company by ourselves. We gathered the minimum requirement of ten million yen for a joint-stock company and established a venture company. Half of the members were and are CARC researchers.Our intention regarding the management of the company nonetheless did not meet the blue print of AIST venture set by AIST. The most critical obstacle was the issue of “conflict of interest”. AIST excluded the venture company even from bidding to undertake CARC missions, just because there was a possibility of conflict of interest because some of CARC members were stakeholders and board members of the venture company. It practically nullified our intention of setting up a venture company.There was also a mismatch on the conception of the life span of AIST venture companies. As mentioned above, we set up the company because there was none to undertake our requirements. We researchers did not intend to run it for profit. Our intention was to sell the company when it became stable in its business. However AIST claimed to retrieve the right of industrial properties back to AIST after five years. We could not sell the company. As of the righting of this article (2009), we still run the company voluntarily, but there is no future plan.5) Activities in academic societiesThe Cyber Assist project had a plan to launch special interest groups at academic societies. We established a research group called Intelligent City Information Infrastructure at Information Processing Society of Japan in 2001. Its activity was centered on social application of IT. This research group, together with another research group of intelligent home appliances, became the core of the new SIG ubiquitous computing systems of IPSJ from 2003 to date.There was another informal research group named Ubiquitous Joho (Ubiquitous Information) formed to which the director of CARC, Nakashima, contributed actively. This research group did not belong to any society. It rather functioned to bridge those academic societies. One of the major achievements of the group is a video presentation “Small Stories 2008”Note 15). At the time, there were several research promotions, or future predictions, videos by Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, NTT DoCoMo and Nokia. We authored Small Stories 2008 as a near future vision of technologies realistically achievable by participating researchers. We featured scenes with information loupe reflecting the concept of CoBIT or My-button by CARC.NotesNote 1) We cannot translate kagaku as either “science” or “engineering” here, since it narrows the definition of the word. The definition of “service kogaku” is not settled yet. We regard it as a study of practice. We do not use the narrow definition as science or engineering for service enterprises.Note 2) GDA or Global Document Annotation is a set of tags for intelligent contents.Note 3) It was just before incorporation of Agency of Industrial Science and Technology that we persuaded them to employ a non-researcher formally and the proposal was accepted.Note 4) We were lucky to have Shunji Yamanaka who is famous in designing Nissan Q45 and the Suica reader for JR.Note 5) If the journal of Synthesiology were published at the time of CARC’s activity, it would have been a good target. That is why we published this paper after CARC terminated.Note 6) Suica was put into service in November, 2001. It is later than the establishment of CARC.Note 7) CoBIT originated from the idea to use infrared beam of i-lidar for communication, instead of the original purpose of positioning.Note 8) Research themes of individual researchers usually sustain beyond the period of a project or change of organizational structure of the research institute to which the researchers belong to. At CARC, we requested each member to distribute their effort one to one for group research themes and individual research themes. They of course may not contradict each other, and many themes satisfy interest of both. RoboCup is a good example where an individual theme was carried over as a group theme.Note 9) Although we do not have enough space for details, let us exemplify one case. We learned that even a blind person enjoys TV programs. When he encounters a scene whose details cannot be figured out only from sound information, he places a phone call to his friends for explanation. In this case, synchronization of TV channels in distant locations is useful. We implemented the function.Note 10) Ordinary Good Design award is given to about one thousand goods, but only twenty one of them are given the name of “METI Minister Award”. Ecology design award has only two slots. We are very proud of receiving this.Note 11) In fact, the situation is the same in English dictionaries.

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