Pukyong National University Student Wins Grand Prize at ICT Business Model Idea Competition

The team of third-year students Lee Yeo-jin, Lee Seong-jae, Bang Seong-jun, and Jang Hyeong-seung from the Department of Information and Communication Engineering at Pukyong National University won the grand prize, the Busan Mayor's Award, at the 4th ICT Business Model Idea Competition.

Co-hosted by the Busan Information Industry Promotion Agency, Ulsan Information Industry Promotion Agency, Gyeongnam Technopark, and Korea Information and Communication Promotion Association, this competition was recently held as part of the ICT Innovation Square expansion project by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the National IT Industry Promotion Agency to foster talent leading digital innovation in the Busan, Ulsan, and Gyeongnam regions.

The Pukyong National University students proposed the "Auto Beekeeping System," an automated beekeeping system that reduces the workload of beekeepers, for this competition which involved planning business model ideas utilizing digital new technologies such as AI, blockchain, data, IoT, and networks, receiving the highest evaluation among participating teams.

Students from Pukyong National University who won the Grand Prize at the 4th ICT Business Model Idea Competition are posing for a commemorative photo.

They planned and proposed this system to solve difficulties faced by beekeepers such as preventing hornet damage, checking the presence of royal cells (large comb cells created to raise a new queen bee), maintaining temperature and humidity, and managing the bee population.

The Auto Beekeeping System consists of a camera, monitor, various sensors, and the object recognition model "YOLO v5," which uses artificial intelligence deep learning.

This system prevents hornet damage by generating frequencies that attract hornets when they appear, luring them into traps, and is designed to analyze images captured by the camera to check royal cells and monitor the number of bees in real time.

Additionally, an automatic temperature and humidity controller manages cooling fans and humidifiers to maintain the hive’s temperature and humidity, and an application allows intuitive monitoring of this information.

Professor Joo Moon-gap, the supervising professor, said, “Utilizing this automated beekeeping system will increase work speed and reduce labor, thereby improving productivity,” adding, “We also expect to build a beekeeping-related dataset and achieve an expansion effect in the beekeeping market.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.