Taidii co-founder and chief executive Wang Bin says key products in the pipeline include a new version of its AI engine for curriculum planning,KANGAROOS may soon be hopping into the heartlands armed with sensors and artificial intelligence . At least, that's the kind of future that education technology firm Taidii hopes to realise.
In addition to the robot, Taidii has developed a suite of systems designed to reduce teachers' administrative work in areas such as curriculum planning, student assessments, staff deployment and training, and parent-teacher communication. But that vision only came about after a chance visit from government officials to the National University of Singapore's Social Robotics Lab in 2012, where Mr Wang was in his final year of post-graduate studies in electrical and computer engineering.
The firm started with a pilot of four pre-school centres and has expanded to more than a third of pre-schools here, along with more than 130 in Malaysia and the Philippines, and 316 in China. Revenue has grown by a factor of 10 since 2014, he adds, noting that Taidii is on track to double its earnings this year due to strong demand from the Chinese market. The firm is also in the black as it is at a"steady state" in the local market.