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Faculty of Faculty of Science and Engineering student wins "Excellence Award" in Robotics and AI Research Student Idea ContestUtsunomiya Campus

On Saturday, August 2, 2025, Mr. Naoki Sugaya (Faculty of Science and Engineering Department of Information and Electronic Engineering 4th year) won the Excellence Award in the Student Idea Contest held by Marutsu Elec Corporation as a project to support university, Graduate School and technical college students nationwide.
The contest was open to students interested in electronic technologies such as AI, IoT, robotics, and energy-saving technologies, and this year's contest received a record number of 19 entries.

The winning entry, "Fruit Tree Stink Bug Detection System Using Farmland Patrol Robots," is a cutting-edge initiative that aims to reduce manpower and achieve early detection in response to the increasingly serious damage caused by fruit tree stink bugs by introducing an autonomous patrol robot that utilizes the RTK-GNSS positioning system and AI image recognition. It was particularly praised for combining high-precision positioning with a detection model based on actual images, and for achieving both practicality and accuracy in cooperation with local farmers. It also has great potential for future development, such as integration with pesticide spraying, and is expected to be applied to actual fields as an excellent example of agricultural robotics.
Professor Yuichi Hasuda of the same department, who supervised him, offered words of praise, and Sugaya expressed his delight, saying, "Although we didn't win the top prize at the University Student Invention Contest in March, we have gained confidence by receiving recognition on the same level as students from Kyoto University and Osaka University." We look forward to seeing even greater success from him in the future.

For more information about Faculty of Science and Engineering click here
Click here for the results of the Student Idea Contest

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