The 2021 first From IP to IPO (FITI) Entrepreneurship Incentive Program sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Technology held the final election and awards ceremony recently. The STUST Interdisciplinary Team of Engineering and Design won the Entrepreneurship Excellence Award. The "HanDo Lab" team was formed by Jian-Ping Su and Yi-Chen from the Department of Electronic Engineering, directed by Professor Wan-Rong Chang; Jia-Shuan Liao and Rui-Ling Lin from the Department of Innovative Product Design, directed by Associate Professor Kun Ouyang; Zhi-An Bo from the Department of Electrical Engineering, directed by Assistant Professor Jin-Bo Shi. The team, formed by teachers and students from three different departments, won the Entrepreneurship Excellence Award in this competition with their entrepreneurial product "AI Armature" and a prize money of 1 million NT dollars and an entrepreneurial grant of 1 million NT dollars—a total of 2 million NT dollars.

[Jian-Ping Su, a team student participating in the competition, was giving an online speech for the award.]

In 2013, the Ministry of Science and Technology launched the From IP to IPO (FITI) Entrepreneurship Incentive Program, focusing on the entrepreneurial needs of students in the fields of information communication, biology, medicine, science and technology, providing students with six months of professional business training to learn through these trainings. Students were trained to know how to transform technical research into business ideas, entrepreneurial knowledge, business speeches, and how to obtain entrepreneurial seed capital resources, improve operational capabilities, teamwork growth capabilities, business model thinking, and start-up capital acquisition and use. Forty teams were selected in the preliminary selection of this competition. After 5 entrepreneurship courses, 2 camps, and 2 selections, the team won the Entrepreneurship Excellence Award and Entrepreneurship Potential Award.

["AI Armature"]

"AI Armature," which won the Entrepreneurship Excellence Award this time, is composed of AI vision devices and AI prostheses. Through human factor product design and AI engineering technology, it provides a set of handy and practical artificial intelligence prosthetic aids for patients with problems on their upper limbs. A person with a severed upper limb uses a visual device that can be worn on glasses to perform AI recognition of the real-time image of the object he wants to extract, and then he can send an action command to the AI prosthesis to perform the corresponding gesture conversion. "AI Armature" overcomes the inconvenience of wearing electronic prostheses currently on the market for people with severed upper limbs. It is expected that those with severed upper limbs can return to their normal lives by wearing lightweight AI prostheses that can automatically change gestures.

The award-winning instructors—Prof. Wan-Rong Chang, Prof. Kun Ouyang, and Prof. Jin-Bo Shi—said that the FITI competition held by the Ministry of Science and Technology can be regarded as one of the highest-level competitions in the innovation and entrepreneurship circle, as it is different from other entrepreneurial competitions. The final entrepreneurship excellence award was selected during the training process. The team not only learned a wealth of entrepreneurial knowledge in the process, but also allowed the team members to convert the technology they had learned at school into entrepreneurship. This has allowed students to graduate with their own company. The research and development funding for the award-winning entrepreneurial work "AI Armature" came from the support of the "Intensive Professional Technology Research and Development and Talent Cultivation Program of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology University," so that the work can actually be linked to the rehabilitation department of Chimei Hospital, allowing people with severed upper limbs to experience the actual experience. Only by researching and developing from the perspective of the needs of the upper limbs in the life of the patients can they obtain the highest honor of FITI.

Deng-Maw Lu, President of STUST, said that the "Innovation and Entrepreneurship Incentive Program" sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Technology has coached 3,229 young entrepreneurs since 2013, with a total fundraising of NT$ 4.59 billion, which is important to students who plan to start a business. It is one of the resources they should not miss. Congratulations to the cross-field team "HanDo Lab," composed of the Department of Electronics, Department of Industry and Design, and Department of Electrical Engineering, for winning the biggest prize in the competition—the "Entrepreneurship Excellence Award." It was not easy. This is also affirmative to STUST, which has been working hard to cultivate students' innovation and entrepreneurial achievements. In the future, STUST will continue to invest in special production funds and entrepreneurial resources in order to provide teachers and students with more resources for innovation and entrepreneurship in the school, making STUST a unicorn in innovation and entrepreneurship education.