The Department of Electrical Engineering, STUST, won the Silver Award in the Application Group and the Best Creativity Award in the Application Group of the 21st Macronix Golden Silicon Award and the third place in the finals of the "German Falling Walls Lab Innovation Challenge in Taiwan. The 21st Macronix Golden Silicon Award Application Group Silver Award was offered prize money of 200,000 NT dollars, and the Application Group Best Creative Award offered prize money of 30,000 NT dollars. This year, the 21st Macronix Golden Silicon Award Ceremony was held in the Taipei International Conference Hall a few days ago. Yan-Kun Su, Convener of Macronix Golden Silicon Award, said that this year's technical and vocational colleges had equally brilliant results. In particular, the fact that both foreign students and local students participated in the STUST school team showed that the internationalization of the competition was greatly valued by foreign students.

[The STUST team includes (from left to right) Jie Shih, a graudte student in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Assistant Professor Jin-Bo Shih, another graduate student Ming-Jun Ke, and a graduate Yu-Cheng Huang , who won the Silver Award in the application group and the Best Creativity Award in the application group.]

Under the guidance of Assistant Professor Jinbo Shih, the electrical engineering team of STUST “We Meet Again" outdistanced the 255 excellent teams all the way. The team consisted of three outstanding foreign students who worked in the lab on electrical touch controls applied to the enhanced biomedical assistive experiment, including Wen-Zhi Dan, Jie Shih, Ming-Jun Ke, and a graduate of the Department of Electrical Engineering—Yu-Cheng Huang. The eventually won the Macron Golden Silicon Award, known as the Golden Bell Award or the Golden Horse Award in the fields of Electrical Engineering and Electronic Engineering. Wen-Zhi Dan also competed in the "German Falling Walls Lab Innovation Challenge in Taiwan" finals in Taiwan and won the third place. All of the above were led by Assistant Professor Jin-Bo Shih of the Department of Electrical Engineering, STUST.

[Wen-Zhi Dan (DAAD), a master student from the Department of Electrical Engineering, STUST, won the third place in the final of the “German Falling Walls Lab” Innovation Challenge in Taiwan.”]

The work "Applying the TacPic System and Artificial Intelligence to the Rapid Development of Tactile Teaching Materials for the Visually Impaired and the Blind" aims at improving the learning experience of the visually impaired and the blind (VIB) as the original intention of developing this work. It can be customized and personalized, and it regards artificial intelligence (AI) and 3D printing as one of the technologies that can be used to help VIB create learning materials. The team designed an easy-to-use system for special teachers and parents and for VIB learners to develop tactile learning aids. The TacPic system platform can automatically create tactile teaching materials through AI cloud computing based on the images uploaded by the user. The system can use multiple technologies of machine learning, image processing, AI, natural language processing, and 3D reconstruction to produce different types of tactile teaching materials, and its output can generate STL or other 3D printed files. Through the TacPic system platform, teachers can easily create these tactile teaching materials for VIB students and at the same time help students develop the ability to generate new tactile teaching aids.

[Students from STUST were introducing their work "Applying the TacPic System and Artificial Intelligence to the Rapid Development of Tactile Teaching Materials for the Visually Impaired and the Blind" to Minister Zheng-Zhong Wu of the Ministry of Science and Technology.]

On the other hand, the German Falling Walls Lab” Innovation Challenge is an international event inspired by the Berlin Wall. Its preliminaries are held every year in various countries around the world, providing a platform for outstanding young scholars. The outstanding student Wen-Zhi Dan, guided by Assistant Professor Jin-Bo Shih of the Department of Electrical Engineering and representing the laboratory, competed in the finals with the same work that won the Macronix Golden Silicon Award, won the third place and was unanimously recognized by the judges.

[The STUST team includes (from left to right) Assistant Professor Jin-Bo Shih of the Department of Electrical Engineering, and graduate students Jie Shih, Ming-Jun Ke, and Yu-Cheng Huang (back right), a graduate, who won the Silver Award in the application group and the Best Creativity Award in the application group.]

The team of the Department of Electrical Engineering of the STUST expressed their thanks to a lot of people and school units that had helped them: President Lian-Shi Liao of Taichung Minicipal Taichung Special Education School for the Visually Impaired, Director An-Hua Ding, Section Lead Offical Yu-Lun Lin, Instructor Yu-Rong He, Instructor Si-Yi Li and a lot of her students, Supervisor Shi-Min Pan of Tainan Eden Social Welfare Foundation, and Tainan Youming Association for the Visually Impaired. With the assistance of these people and organizations, the team could find more contributing scientific research directions in the mobility and education of the visually impaired and the blind, successfully developing and improving these assistive devices. In the future, it is hoped that the team can bring technological innovations into the development of teaching aids, so that the world could offer more help to children who are blind.

Assistant Professor Jin-Bo Shih of the Department of Electrical Engineering said that helping and improving the living and learning of disadvantaged groups in society has been their scientific research direction. First of all, they have to thank the Ministry of Science and Technology for giving them the spatial exploration and environmental identification developed specifically for the visually impaired and blind. The "SEER System Platform" project allows the team to discover from another perspective the topic that the world is in need of assistance—"learning" during the implementation process.