HANGZHOU, CHINA – Media OutReach – September 28, 2023 – Aiming to promote the sustainability and inclusiveness of the Asian Games and the Hangzhou Asian Paralympics, Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of the Alibaba Group, launched a sustainability website. an app for athletes, journalists and staff in the three Asian Games villages to promote low-carbon behavior, as well as a virtual sign language interpreter to ensure people with hearing impairments can better participate in the Games .
“Cloud-based technology contributes to the sustainable and inclusive development of the Asian Games. We want to harness the power of technology, together with our partners, to encourage more people to participate in our efforts to make the Games greener and more accessible to all. everything,” said
Jingren Zhou, CTO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.
Interactive web application to boost eco-responsible behavior
To help the Hangzhou Asian Games honor its green mission, Alibaba Cloud has launched a sustainable lifestyle web application that helps Asian Games participants adopt low-carbon behaviors and reduce their carbon footprint through digital engagement.
Interactive web app rewards Asian Games athletes, journalists and staff with carbon points for making eco-friendly lifestyle choices, such as taking public transportation, recycling waste and reducing waste eating. In all Asian Games villages, participants can scan a QR code to log their low-carbon activities in the web app, ranging from not using plastic bags in supermarkets to taking a photo of their clean plates in a restaurant dining room. effort to reduce food waste.
Behind the web app is a system that translates individual low-carbon activities into carbon points. Participants can accumulate points and redeem them for limited edition Asian Games-themed pins and low-carbon products. The web application has attracted more than 310,000 visits to participate in low-carbon activities in the Asian Games villages, and it has recorded more than 7 tons of carbon reduction from the activities since the opening of the Asian Games villages. Asian Games on September 16.
“Alibaba Cloud has proven expertise in supporting the sustainability initiatives of sporting organizations and events through digital technology. Through the innovative sustainable lifestyle web application, we aim to encourage Asian Games participants to be more sustainable by recording their daily eco-friendly choices and providing support. they see the tangible impact of their choices,” said
William Xiong, vice president of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence and general director of Business Cloud service.
Alibaba Cloud leveraged its AI-powered carbon management tool
Energy expert measure and optimize the carbon footprint of manufacturing the mascots for the Hangzhou Asian Games. For example, according to Energy Expert’s assessment, one of the three mascots, Congcong, has a cradle-to-gate carbon footprint of 1.59 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), with emissions coming from three main sources, including electricity consumption, packaging and raw materials.
By advising factories to increase the use of solar energy and adopt more environmentally friendly designs, the sustainability platform helped reduce the product’s carbon footprint by 0.15 kg of CO2 equivalent per item.
To encourage broader participation, Alibaba Cloud has partnered with 10 companies and brands, from retail and transportation to banking, to take a sustainable approach to the Asian Games villages. Its Energy Expert sustainability platform provided carbon footprint measurement, carbon neutrality calculation and certification services for pin exchange and low carbon stores with carbon neutrality facilities. energy saving in one of the Asian Games villages.
As part of sustainability initiatives during the Asian Games, Energy Expert helped Chinese dairy company Yili identify the sources of carbon emissions from its store in the Asian Games Village and proposed plans to optimize its consumption electricity to reduce its carbon footprint, including by increasing the use of solar energy and installing energy-saving lamps and an air conditioner in the store. He also advised Yili to build a dedicated section for low-carbon products and deploy a milk carton recycling machine.
A digital avatar to facilitate communication for hearing-impaired people
According to the World Health Organization (WHO[1]), currently more than 1.5 billion people (nearly 20% of the world’s population) live with hearing loss. To drive inclusion during the Asian Paralympic Games to be held from October 22 to 28, Alibaba Cloud introduced its digital avatar, Xiaomi, serving as a sign language interpreter for people with hearing impairments.
The cloud pioneer integrates the Xiaomi digital avatar into a mini-app on the Alipay payment platform. The mini app supports two-way translation between sign language and spoken Chinese language. Users can enter voice messages, which the virtual character will translate into sign language for people who are hard of hearing. Conversely, the mini app can interpret sign language into spoken language, facilitating seamless communication between hearing and hard of hearing people.
Sign language, with its unique blend of gestures, expressions and body movements, has its own phonetics, vocabulary and grammar that differ from spoken language. To address these complexities, Alibaba Cloud compiled a Chinese Sign Language translation dataset containing 25,000 signs collected and annotated from sign language practitioners and hearing-impaired people in Zhejiang Province, China.
Alibaba Cloud leveraged its advanced visual recognition algorithm and motion tracking capabilities to capture the movements of hearing impaired people and translate sign language into natural language with a state-of-the-art language translation model. To convert natural language into sign language, Alibaba Cloud also developed a deep neural network and a lip movement generation module, enabling the virtual character to perform sign language gestures accurately.
“Through the integration of natural language processing, computer vision and machine learning technologies, we have developed a sign language translation system. This innovation aims to make the Asian Paralympic Games more inclusive and accessible to hearing impaired people.”
said Matt Zhang, an algorithm engineer at Alibaba Cloud.
AI sign language interpreter Xiaomi has also been integrated into the Asian Games news channel to improve the accessibility of its announcements. During the Asian Paralympics, Xiaomi can help hearing-impaired participants interact with volunteers at venues for various assistance, including asking for directions, seeking medical help, and getting help watching the matches.
Hashtag: #AlibabaCloud #AsianGames2023 #HangzhouAsianGames2023
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