Lip-reading technology and Sogou Doctors attracting visitors

As the world's first lip-reading system for Chinese language, Sogou's recognition system combines computer vision and natural language processing (NLP) and was awarded as the "leading technology achievement" at the 4th World Internet Conference in 2017.

"In certain application scenarios, the recognition accuracy can reach 90 percent, even in a noisy environment," according to a Sogou employee at Sogou's booth, "the advanced technology can be of great help in a width of ID verification, public security, civil-military integration, etc."

Visitors also gave their thumbs up for Sogou's AI applications in health care. Sogou Doctors, for example is a digital medical information platform offering various services such as hospital information, medicine instructions and health tips. The smart application is a pioneering exploration to relieve China's imbalance of medical resources. Sogou will try to add more hospitals to its Sogou Doctors platform and will keep running it on a nonprofit basis.

Sogou's interpretation robot on display in Zhongguancun Exhibition Center on Aug 26. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Headquartered in China's Silicon Valley, Sogou AI strong and growing

Zhongguancun-based Sogou, which went public on the New York Stock Exchange in November last year, is China's second-largest search engine after Baidu. It also operates Sogou Input Method and Sogou browser.

Since its establishment in 2003, the company has developed from a small startup team into the fourth-largest internet company in China. Among the services provided by Sogou, search business generates more than 80 percent of the revenue, followed by sales of smart hardware products and internet value-added services.

This year, the company remains focused on language-centered AI technologies, such as translation, voice and computer vision. Sogou has forecast revenues of between $296 million and $305 million for the second quarter.

"Sogou's success can not be separated from Zhongguancun's favorable policies and acceleration services over the past 30 years," said Wang. It's Zhongguancun's unparalleled innovative environment that guaranteed Sogou sustainable development in the first place.

As the national innovation hub, Zhongguancun Science Park will continue to incubate more and more technology-oriented enterprises like Sogou.