HONG KONG, Feb. 26 (Xinhua) -- The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) and Britain's Royal College of Art (RCA) signed here Tuesday a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to establish an artificial intelligence (AI) design laboratory.

The Laboratory will be the world's leading research facility to advance the integration of AI into the design of products and service.

Chief Executive of China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Carrie Lam witnessed the signing of the MoU by Philip C. H. Chan, interim president and provost of PolyU and Paul Thompson, vice-chancellor of RCA.

The laboratory will address industry demands for efficiency, automation and customising products and services and its research deliverables will support industries including healthcare, manufacturing, hospitality and retail services.

The two institutions will carry out an empirical research in Affective Computing and Social Robots that could recognize and analyze human emotions. They will also innovate materials of the future that are extremely light, robust and able to detect human bio-metrics for fashion and wearables; create automatic systems for ergonomic design and human modelling, and some other ones.

Chan said the laboratory will bring together the strengths of both institutions to lead the world in this new design paradigm, contributing to the innovation and technology development in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

Thompson said the world will witness breakthroughs across design and technology at the turn of the fourth revolution. RCA has built its capacity to work across disciplines, combining its art and design research expertise with insights from science, technology and engineering.