Midea Group Co. Ltd.

03/21/2019 | Press release | Archived content

HEAD OF COLMO DESIGNER

HEAD OF COLMO DESIGNER

Walking Far and Enjoying More, This Silicon Valley Geek to Climb ever high with COLMO

Posted: 21.03.2019

People have different first impressions of Suresh. If only some slices in daily work and life are captured, perhaps no one can accurately determine the practice area that this serene, courteous Indian-American elite in Silicon Valley is engaged in.

Yeah, Suresh is a fascinating mystery, as he is accustomed to standing straight at the desk working, often takes a backpack ready to hike right now, has adhered to vegetarianism for decades and even has a Chinese name "Su Wanli".

The mystery was solved on 19 October 2018, when the new premier AI-powered home appliance brand COLMO was unveiled on Mont Blanc, this modest Indian-American engineer finally showed his real identity - Head of COLMO Emerging Technology Center in Silicon Valley - to the world in his speech. His thinking and rhetoric match the job attributes required in the AI field: Forward-looking and high-precision. This time his prediction seemed bolder than the impression he usually makes on people: Global Super Individuals are rising in the world. He and the formidable power behind COLMO in Silicon Valley will change lifestyle more than ever and will serve the nature of life using advanced technology.

Some people might be skeptical in the beginning of the talk, but you will understand from the self-confidence in his firm eyes and tender look that comes with the description of the future by COLMO in this speech is true. The life picture with a new-generation of AI-powered home appliances is settled thanks to COLMO.

IS THE SELF-DISCIPLINED GEEK MORE PRECISE THAN MACHINES? ACTUALLY HE IS MORE INTERESTING THAN EXPECTED

Located in San Jose, California, the COLMO Emerging Technology Center in Silicon Valley is the home appliance industry's first innovation organization based in Silicon Valley and specialized in artificial intelligence (AI) frontier technology research, development, and application. Suresh, the head of the center, is definitely the most identifiable of the staff here - He is perhaps the most intense person at COLMO: He maintains the habit of standing up at the desk long during work hours, to retain a sharp mind all the time. His meals refresh his track record as a determined vegetarian every day. Besides the reason of cultural tradition, Suresh attaches great importance to the "learning state". He believes, peace and concentration resulted from vegetarianism are the key to effective and clear thinking, while this also symbolizes strict self-discipline.

Yeah, as the head of AI technology, who leads the COLMO "brain", he needs to be computer-grade robust and deliberate. This is well aligned with a quote from his beloved Bruce Lee - "Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless - like water."

Suresh's fluidity goes beyond thinking. At the Emerging Technology Center, he oversees a strong, efficient COLMO AI R&D team. Their busy daily work schedule represents the mission of the R&D center: Develop AI strategies and standardized systems by leveraging the power of technology and engineers' creative thinking from the perspective of globalization, and apply them to all COLMO products.

In a nutshell, Suresh is doing some of the most interesting things in today's technology community -to empower COLMO home appliances with cutting-edge technology.

FROM HIS HOMETOWN TO SILICON VALLEY, FROM B2B TO THE HOME APPLIANCE INDUSTRY, HE IS CONSTANTLY PASSIONATE ABOUT CHALLENGES

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Suresh gave himself a meaningful Chinese name: Su Wanli. As his life path indicates, Suresh amazingly looks like his name, from hobby to career.

As a world traveler, Suresh is curious about and fond of the culture and life in China. The zeal for exploring the unknown world is also similar to the trajectory of his study and career.

When studying applied science and computer technology as a sophomore at Bharathiar University in 1990, Suresh first touched the future trend at lab - image processing technology and traffic signal control. He immediately realized his major would completely change the future human life, and thus became interested in neural network. When he graduated with First Class Honors, the supervisor, who had a great impact on Suresh, sent him a message: "Think big, act small, and make progress step by step while ensuring stability."

Having extensive experience eight years later, Suresh moved from India to Silicon Valley and embarked on a journey of ten thousand miles. For twenty years, he has worked at renowned companies in Silicon Valley, including Internet giants, data system leaders and incumbent CRM providers. He has been obsessed with cutting-edge technology changes, while maintaining a vigilant and sharp learning state - After all, anyone is likely overtaken by others anytime in the place where the world's brightest minds gather.

Suresh has embraced vast project and management work with an open mind. In this process, the importance of data, models and deep learning is gradually growing - which are the core of AI technology. In challenging the status quo continuously, Suresh has formed an effective set of product research approaches:

Put forward ideas boldly, integrate various building blocks in an organic way, and thus expand products with a high degree of completeness; coupled with innovative technology, create a complete product ecosystem and thus influence every consumer.

2018 marks the 18th year of Suresh working in Silicon Valley. AI has already become a popular topic. Technology-oriented consumers are rising rapidly. AI is being applied to key fields such as autonomous driving, financial services and smart manufacturing. Suresh, a veteran in Silicon Valley, strives to further reach consumer life with AI. He is closely communicating with Chinese team members, including those at Shenzhen Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, on project progress.

The AI project team is highly-confidential at the Emerging Technology Center. As a revolutionary brand set to shine in home appliance industry, COLMO is committed to tailor-making premier future-proof AI-powered home appliances for the unique group of Global Super Individuals.

ENABLE COLMO HOME APPLIANCES WITH A BRAIN, CLIMB THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN OF AI-POWERED HOME APPLIANCES

Suresh believes, building the AI-powered home appliance brand COLMO cannot be accomplished with one stroke and behind it there will be decades of accumulation, exploration and endeavors. This computer scientist who is keen on mountaineering all year round was deeply moved by the trait of planting feet firmly on the ground. More than that, the veteran who has been in California for twenty years has seen the long-lost spirit of Silicon Valley from the COLMO Emerging Technology Center, the home appliance industry's first innovation organization based in Silicon Valley and specialized in AI frontier technology research, development, and application: Thinking forward, rising to challenges, and climbing constantly.

In working, Suresh has gained full support from COLMO Emerging Technology Center. His technology team has adopted a highly-mature team working model in Silicon Valley. When it comes to team strategy, he takes an attitude of bold imagination combined with pragmatism, endeavoring to stay sharp and keep on learning. In execution: he focuses on the goal, stays away from distractions, is attentive to details and constantly challenges the status quo. In team building, he and his team always trust each other and jointly keep an eye on emerging trends in Silicon Valley.

How should the increasingly mature team give COLMO home appliances the AI "brain"? In Suresh's view, starting with ideal perfection, home appliances will become trusted friends, alleviate burdens on humans with the wisdom of technology, help retain the joy of life, and usher in

a smart transformation that will fully permeate into home scenarios.

As said by Albert Einstein, "Out of clutter, find simplicity; from discord, find harmony; in the middle of difficulties, like the opportunity."

Indeed, the daily life experiences with traditional home appliances are endless burdens, and time-, energy- and strength-consuming repeated work. Only with the power of technology, we can provide people with comfortable, smart user experiences and effectively reduce household burdens. However, in some specific activities such as cooking, there is joy of creation and appreciation. Suresh's task is to remove burdensome repeated work and refine shining joy and pleasure with the AI technology.

Suresh has led the team to identify three key pillars that help empower COLMO home appliances with AI, including Harmonized Interaction, Deep Learning, and Expert System, integrate three advanced AI technologies and shape new daily life scenarios.

The example shared by Suresh come from the upcoming epochal COLMO products. COLMO home appliances adept at deep learning will actively think about user demands for the first time. With the understanding and analysis of user habits, demand and preference, we no longer operate home appliances simply, but will have a familiar, wise partner in life.

Suresh believes, the AI technology will first empower a long-overlooked life field: Cloth cleaning. As complex, diverse modern lifestyles and consumer choices have resulted in a variety of cloth textures, fabrics and techniques, criteria for judgment on cloth cleanliness is elevated to an unprecedented height. However, most manufacturers have still put undue emphasis on capacity and power in response to the consumer demand. After all, unlike the stomach, naked eyes cannot immediately judge cleanliness of clothes washed by the machine.

To lead consumers to a new realm of home appliances, a strong multinational R&D team formed by the Suresh-led COLMO Emerging Technology Center and Washing Machine Smart Technology Research Institute in Shenzhen are actively innovating the home appliance industry. They have empowered washing machine products with vision recognition, deep learning and big data expert system as never before, actively understood user demands, and created a new realm in cloth cleaning.

Imagine an upcoming washing scenario: The user does not need to think hard about complex procedures and button combinations, and merely puts a heavy heap of clothes mixed in with different grades, textures and techniques into the COLMO washing machine. The machine will open "eyes" - a top "Smart Vision" feature - to judge cloth types, colors and volume quickly and accurately in the mixture through AI image recognition, determine the washing mode and detergent use on its own, adjust stream velocity and temperature curve dynamically in washing, and detect detergent residues anytime. From now on, staining, wearing and detergent residues in washing will become a thing of the past. Covering all the bases, AI-powered home appliances will even have new difficulty solved easily: What should you do if you carelessly put jeans and a fragile silk scarf into the washing machine at the same time? The COLMO washing machine will control different washing forces based on accurate judgement, do complete cleaning and protect each cloth.

More surprisingly, Suresh has not stopped at the objective of cloth cleaning in the COLMO washing machine R&D. To reach a new realm of deep learning, he and COLMO have used thousands of types of clothes as learning "materials", collected and marked more than 100,000 complex image samples for AI model training, and become a top expert in the washing machine field!

As a result of the joint technology efforts and combined with deep experience of thousands of washing industry experts, the COLMO washing machine has the "strongest brain" with unprecedented wisdom and realize triple awakening, i.e. vision, thinking and awareness of learning.

Now, the COLMO washing machine has mastered more than 3,000 washing modes, far more than dozens seen in traditional washing machines. In the meanwhile, the studious COLMO washing machine maintains the habit of continuous learning like Suresh. In the future, with the access to massive samples in the COLMO cloud-based database, algorithm correction plans will be continuously input into the washing machine's brain, so the machine can competently deal with any form of cloth states. Moreover, user information about each washing process will be archived at the COLMO database and a cloud application geared to the user will be updated in sync, thus allowing the COLMO washing machine to stay at the top level of washing machines.

The life scenario shaped by the COLMO washing machine is only one of the fascinating values of rationalism maximized by the COLMO brain enabled with deep learning.

Suresh, keen on mountaineering, obviously understands the logic of climbing high: The first products created by him and COLMO have only blown the trumpet of reaching the top of home appliances. Suresh is modest and sober. In his view, COLMO has fantastically taken the first step and will move forward: Create an ideal globally-integrated life through COLMO product iteration.

This is a big vision. However, for a mountaineer fully armed with the spirit of Silicon Valley in the AI-powered home appliance industry, who has been on journeys of ten thousand miles time and time again, only reaching the top can maximize the greatest value of rationalism from COLMO.

COLMO climbs Mont Blanc

George Mallory, a legendary mountaineer, replied to the question "Why did you want to climb Mount Everest?" with the retort "Because it's there". This is also the best explanation for Suresh and COLMO climbing constantly.

ABOUT COLMO EMERGING TECHNOLOGY CENTER IN SILICON VALLEY

The Emerging Technology Center is a key R&D center in COLMO's global brand presence, and also the home appliance industry's first innovation organization based in Silicon Valley and specialized in artificial intelligence frontier technology research, development and application. The Emerging Technology Center aims at exploring and incubating AI technology, accelerating technology maturation and implementation by bringing together the world's top resources, and becoming a core engine for COLMO to usher in a smart transformation of home appliances.