Tec de Monterrey & Fresh Consulting team up for technology innovation

Tec de Monterrey and leading emerging technology solutions company Fresh Consulting have joined forces to explore joint education and technology projects.

The partnership was formed through the Tec’s Department of Innovation with Emerging Technologies when the international consultancy firm approached the institution with the idea of working together.

Over its 80 years of existence, Tec de Monterrey has continued to promote technological innovation in education.

The institution has been a pioneer in topics such as TV classes, computer science degrees, the use of the Internet, and more recently with the “Professor Hologram” distance learning classes and the Tec’s educational metaverse or Virtual Campus.

Meanwhile, Fresh Consulting is a software, hardware, and robot design innovation company offering holistic technology solution services to businesses.

Two institutions convinced of the need for technological innovation

Irving Hidrogo, Director of Innovation with Emerging Technologies at the Tec, explained to CONECTA that the approach came about as a result of the shared interests of both institutions.

They each frequently explore and develop technology-oriented solutions, such as blockchain, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence.

“We’re compatible because we work with the same technological trends. The difference is that we do so for academic processes and for innovating on student learning,” he said.

“As we share this philosophy, we’re convinced that we’ll create projects together involving our students and faculty (...) so that the projects have greater impact,” he added.

Bringing state-of-the-art technology to students and teachers

Hidrogo gave one example of one of the benefits of this collaboration, which is that students will be able to learn more about artificial intelligence systems and understand the principles of smart control.

For example, he mentioned that Fresh Consulting has provided the Tec with a robotic device with an artificial intelligence-based control system to be used and tested by students and teachers.

Project Moab:

This device, which uses machine learning, was developed in collaboration with Microsoft. Called Project Moab, it’s the only one available to the public in the whole of Latin America.

It has three robotic arms, a camera, and a transparent plate. Using artificial intelligence, it can recognize a ping pong ball and make it balance, no matter where the ball lands.

It also has a manual operating mode so that you can compare a human attempt to the agile virtual learning it has already had through Machine Learning.

“Moab encourages curiosity and creativity in its pursuit of cutting-edge technologies,” said Johnny Rodriguez, Director of Innovation at Fresh.

“Fresh Consulting and Microsoft decided to give it to the Tec so that it can be available to students and teachers at Mostla,” explained Hidrogo.

The artificial intelligence behind it...

More important than the device itself is the AI technology that makes it work and how it can be useful for learning.

“In addition to having fun during this interaction with Moab, they’re going to learn more about how artificial intelligence works,” said Hidrogo.

“This device is didactic and makes a technological trend as abstract as artificial intelligence tangible; it’s a gateway for students to use the framework that was used in their own projects.”

The artificial intelligence it is based on was trained with the Bonsai platform, created by Microsoft, which offers a service to create and train algorithms and install them on robots to be tested and compared.

Students and teachers can use it to create projects.

“Developing projects with Bonsai is easy to carry out. It doesn’t require advanced programming knowledge. Students from the different Tec schools could get to do projects with this platform.”

The device, which was also the winner of the 2022 Red Dot Design Award, is located on the ground floor of the Rector’s Building at the Tec’s Monterrey campus so that it can be used by the Tec community.

“We’re convinced that we’ll be able to create projects together involving our students and faculty.” - Irving Hidrogo

Other joint collaborations

Stemming from this alliance, other innovation projects are being developed, such as a workshop given by the Director of Innovation at Fresh Consulting to Tec students.

This workshop took place in the Tec’s educational metaverse and focused mainly on students learning about and implementing the use of generative artificial intelligence tools to create content.

The workshop was organized by Mostla and included generative artificial intelligence platforms for text, images, audio, video, and programming code, where students were also able to create applications with this type of technology.

“We’re going to be carrying out these types of activities on an ongoing basis. They have experts who are generating the newest technology products in the world,” Hidrogo said.

Similarly, he said that there is also talk of placing Tec students in jobs and internships at the international consultancy firm.

“The idea is for them to offer Tec students both jobs within Fresh, as well as the possibility of doing internships,” he added.

Likewise, Hidrogo said that projects carried out at the institution will be able to count on the support and expertise of Fresh Consulting, in the same way that it offers consulting to organizations in the industry.

“For Fresh, it’s truly an honor to be part of this incredible collaboration with Tec de Monterrey,” said Jacob Rodríguez, innovation consultant at Fresh.

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