News--Welcome to National Chiayi University

　　The “Demo Day” Exhibition and Presentation, as part of the first-edition of AioT Makerathon Design Contest organized by the Chiayi City Government, took place on Oct. 17th on the Sinmin campus of National Chiayi University. The student team Mid-October, consisting of Xu Wei-Chen, Chen Jun-Yu, Wang Xiang-Wen, Zhang He-Kai and Chen Kang-Qi from the Department of Biomechatronic Engineering, NCYU, was awarded the first prize with their “Sweet Pepper Garden Output Estimation System with UAV Aerial Photography.” The SIMPLETE team, formed by students from the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering including Fang Yu-Xuan, Liao Ting-Rou, Zhang You-Rong, Ye Qi-Teng and Huang Jiao-Quan, placed second with the “In-depth Fish Fingerlings Calculator.” The Plant Investigator team from the Department of Management Information Systems won a honorable mention with “Analyzing Plant Growth through Ai Image Recognition.” Mayor Huang Ming-Hui commended the NCYU teacher-student teams on their remarkable achievements on agricultural studies, which are expected to practically assist farmers in solving problems in the workplace or daily life in the future.

　　The preliminary selection for the AioT Makerathon Design Contest, which took place in July, received entries from 35 teams around Taiwan. The teams came from ten colleges and universities across counties and two startup companies. Among them, ten teams were finalist in the competition after professional review. After nearly four months’ devoted hardwork, the NCYU teachers and students showcased their distinguished research and development results on smart agriculture, which were well-received by the judging panel. As members of the first prize-winning team Mid-October, Wang Xiang-Wen and Chen Jun-Yu indicated that the farmers usually need to spend a great amount of time to predict the harvest during harvesting season. Thus, they strived to construct an image interpretation model complete with drones, which are most popular nowadays. Using database for image recognition, the model could achieve an accuracy of at least 90%, thus helping reduce labor cost and time for calculating the harvest. They thanked the NCYU teachers for providing the sweet pepper garden where they could put ideas into practice and make this interesting work possible. They hoped that their research results could be of valuable use to the farmers, who could therefore assess the harvest in an easier way.

　　In his address, NCYU President Chyung Ay mentioned that this decade is marked by digital transformation, which is key to the country’s development. It is noteworthy that the first two letters in the title, “A” and “I,” are capitalized to emphasize “Automation and Artificial,” as well as “Internet, Intelligence and Innovation” respectively. While standing for different meanings, all these concepts are closely connected. As most of the young people in this e-generation are slashers, there are an increasing number of youth who work more than one job, doing sidelines with the help of the internet or smart technology. It requires two expertise to become a “π” type person, and the university is one of the most important learning platform. He expressed gratitude to the city government for offering opportunities for the students to engage in academic-industrial cooperation, and put to display the results of self-learning.

　　Founded on agricultural studies, NCYU has been established for over a century and playing an important role in facilitating the agricultural development in Taiwan. Set up in 2018, the Intelligent Agriculture Research Center has been involving interdisciplinary teams to conduct research regarding agricultural robots, image interpretation system, drone operations, etc. In last May, they worked with iBase Technology Inc. to build the Smart Agriculture Command Center System, which can be used for big data analysis on agriculture via the monitoring system, thus creating a visible integrated structure on smart agriculture. In addition, the first fixed remote control drone license testing and training ground built with concrete in the Yunlin-Chiayi-Tainan region was founded in August, bearing witness to the university’s commitment to smart agriculture