Congratulations! Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology won two championships in the Creative Thinking in Digital Signal Processing Design
Competition and qualified for international competitions by its "uterine contraction monitoring system with forward force feedback"

Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology held, on March 13, Digital Signal Processing Design Competition, with a total of 430 participants and 147 teams from 16 colleges and universities around the island before the final, which included 280 participants from 90 teams. The results showed that Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology won six awards, becoming the biggest winner of this competition. In addition, the STUST team led by Prof. Yi-Chun Du became qualified for international competitions by its "uterine contraction monitoring system with forward force feedback."

【The STUST team—“Keeping the Baby”—led by Prof. Yi-Chun Du (first on the right) became qualified for international competitions】

Executive Vice President Hong-De Chang of Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology said that, thanks to the rapid development of scientific and technological progress, ours is a digital era; audio and video signal processing, green energy and control applications, healthcare applications, and other technology are moving toward digital system development, which also has made all kinds of technological products function better, faster, more stable, smaller, and cheaper. STUST has been working very hard to push in digital signal processing technology; it will also spare no effort in the future with the development of electrical engineering and related resources of the department, trying its best to continue in this area.

The STUST team led by Prof. Du developed the uterine contraction monitoring system with forward force feedback" on the basis of smartphones, establishing a new type of portable real-time monitoring system of uterine contractions in a pregnant woman. In addition to using the new contraction sensing structure to improve measurement accuracy, the system employs more forward force judgment mechanism so as to allow pregnant women to adjust to the optimum sensing position. This keeps the system from the problem that made the previous system easily underestimate the pressure or make mistakes in judgment. The technology derives its form from an ergonomic 3D printing design of streamline for pregnant women to wear. The girdle is made of elastic fiber, adjustable according to the growth with the fetus in the womb. In addition to having instant notification and medical dialing function, the system can also be a wireless network to send contraction data to the cloud to provide further clinical analysis. The judges agreed that the design was a complete work of creative thinking with commercialization potential and that it should be given the qualification to participate in international competitions.

As a result of the competition, STUST also won two other championships with its "Green Energy & Control Application Group" and "Health care application group," winning a sum of NT$ 40,000 as their prize money.