The 4th Delta Advanced Automation Design Contest has just been held at Delta's Wujiang Plant in Jiangsu, China, from July 24-26. A total of 74 teams from 68 colleges and universities in China, Taiwan, Thailand and India earned a place in the final contest. After two days of fierce competition, the winners of the “Special Award”, the highest honor, went to:
˙Chung Yuan Christian University “Intelligent Co-Factory” Team ( Taiwan) which built an IoT smart factory with shared manufacturing equipment for customized products, echoing the competition theme of smart manufacturing.
˙HeFei University of Technology “Hu Bing” Team (China) presented a vision-based programming-free system for robot control, perfectly integrating tracking technology, dual-camera positioning and three-dimension algorithm to achieve simple and programming-free track design and control of robot operation.
The 4th Delta Advanced Automation Design Contest adopted the concept of advanced industrial automation development from “Industry 4.0” and “Made in China 2025”. Under the theme of “Seeking Smart Manufacturing Talents”, the competition included three major categories: “smart machines”, “smart robots”, and “smart manufacturing”. This year, the 74 teams who earned their places in the final contest included 56 teams from China, 6 from Taiwan, 5 from Thailand and 3 from India, making this competition an international event. Aside from the Special Awards, the First Prize, Second Prize, Third Prize and Editor's Awards were also presented among the other 72 teams at the award ceremony on July 26. (Please go to
http://mkt.deltagreentech.com.cn/2017/jingsai/winnerslist.asp for detailed information)
At the award ceremony, Mr. Yancey Hai, chairman of Delta Electronics, Inc., said, “The manufacturing industry worldwide is going through a major transformation toward smart manufacturing. ‘Industry 4.0' and ‘Made in China 2025' are highly focused due to this global trend. Delta, with our mission ‘To provide innovative, clean, and energy-efficient solutions for a better tomorrow', values the development of advanced education and conducts various academia-industrial cooperation projects. The Delta Advanced Automation Design Contest is one of the most important projects, and we have successfully discovered many talents who have demonstrated innovation and creativity through this contest.”
Mr. Andy Liu, general manager of Delta Industrial Automation Business Group, pointed out in his opening speech, “Smart manufacturing is the future of the manufacturing industry, as well as the foundation of ‘Industry 4.0' and ‘Made in China 2025'. To achieve this goal, we need more talent, and that is why Delta, as a world-class industrial automation brand, keeps working on academia-industrial cooperation to cultivate and find more talent. We provide great opportunities such as the Delta Advanced Automation Design Contest to encourage more students to enter and experience the industrial environment and prepare for their future careers in this field.”
Seeking Smart Manufacturing Talents
During the 3-day final contest, contestants needed to pass two stages including a team competition and a championship contest followed by a proposal introduction, a demo kit display and a Q&A session with the judges. At the team competition, all 74 contestants presented their ideas and demonstrated their demo kits' functions and features to all the judges. Finally, 15 teams out of the 74 were chosen to compete at the championship contest, where they must conduct a project presentation, an on-site demo and a Q&A session.
Many creative and outstanding ideas were brought up by contestants during the contest, such as:
˙Chung Yuan Christian University (Taiwan) “Intelligent Co-Factory” Team - IoT Smart Factory with Shared Manufacturing Equipment for Customized Products (Special Award):
Based on the idea of a shared smart production line, the “Intelligent Co-Factory” designed an automated smart coffee bean roasting production solution. This solution adopts Delta's industrial PC and SCADA system to acquire customer orders and machine operation information. Once the order is given, the PLC controls the system to pull the required amount of coffee beans by weight into the roaster and then set the roasting time and temperature to automatically execute coffee bean roasting according to the customer's requirements. Delta's machine vision system was also applied to ensure the roasting status of the coffee beans, and then automatically pull the roasted coffee beans into cups for sealing. This solution integrates IoT technology, smart control and automation technology and monitoring software, and can be applied to a co-production line for small companies. This project is a perfect interpretation of smart manufacturing and it won the Special Award.
˙HeFei University of Technology (China) “Hu Bing” Team - Vision-based Programming-free System of Robot” (Special Award):
This solution uses motion and tracking technology, along with dual-camera machine vision detection and positioning to capture motion traces made by a teaching bar or human hands. With the trace captured, the system conducts trajectory segmentation and transcoding into executable motion instructions for a robot controller to complete the robot operation path planning. Users can also draw any operation track in software for the robot to execute without editing any complicated programs. The innovative project and demo brought the honor of Special Award to the “Hu Bing” Team.
˙LisHui Vocational and Technical College (China) “Pioneers of LisHui This project relies on automation and features smart cultivation and production in growing moss based on customer requirements. The whole system structure can be categorized into three layers:
- Management layer: Achieves remote monitoring and management for a production site
- Equipment layer: Nurtures a variety of moss cultivations in trays
- User-layer: Uses a mobile APP to select types of moss and to remotely monitor and control production information.
The project is well thought out as well as commercial and received the Editor's Award from the media.
˙LPU University (India) “PICASO” Team - PICASO 4.0 (First Prize):
PICASO 4.0 is a Vertical Laser Engraving Automated Solution that integrates Delta's CNC controller and a multi-axis motion control robot. The solution allows the equipment to move horizontally, and can directly perform laser engraving on various materials including brick walls, concrete, glass, timber, and more. As an especially innovative solution that is not constrained by a horizontal workspace, it can also opt for a variety of tools for painting and cutting.
˙Kasetsart University (Thailand) “12M” Team - Fertilized Egg Inspection Automation Machine (First Prize):
The Fertilized Egg Inspection Automation Machine adopts Delta's Machine Vision System to effectively substitute for conventional human eye inspection. When eggs are placed on the backlighted tray, Delta's Machine Vision System can recognize whether the eggs are fertilized by inspecting gray scale of the illuminated eggs, and those detected with an embryo will be further nurtured. This solution can inspect 42 eggs or more at one time with a high accuracy rate of 95%, while helping to save a great amount of labor cost, and increasing inspection efficiency and yield.
˙National Taipei University of Technology (Taiwan) “Checkmate” Team – Chaos Handling / Intelligent Game Player (Second Prize):
The Checkmate utilizes an artificial intelligence algorithm for backgammon that can identify participants' moves and analyze their strategies. It is equipped with Delta's SCARA Robot and Open CNC Controller to play chess with participants. In the future this solution can be further applied as a large-scale machine learning approach for smart manufacturing, where these simulations resemble factory processes such as assembly, sorting, machining, and more. It is the perfect collaboration of AI and smart machines.
A Variety of Activities and a Rich Experience
During the final contest, Delta also organized a variety of activities and keynote speeches, including factory and laboratory visits to the Delta Wujiang Plant, a “Smart Manufacturing Trends & Opportunities and Challenges for Industrial Robots” seminar for teaching experience sharing, and an employment forum. All attendees were pleased with the substantial arrangements and the opportunity to learn more about Delta, and they enjoyed the interaction and information exchanges with their teammates as well as other contestants.
Andrea Wang, one of the members of the Special Award winning team Chung Yuan Christian University “Intelligent Co-Factory”, said, “Participating in the Delta Advanced Automation Design Contest was a valuable experience. It was a great test of our technology and learning, and we've learned so much about the industry and gained much knowledge from Delta, judges, experts, and other contestants during the final contest. I'm grateful for all their suggestions and instructions. Observing the operations of an international company such as Delta will definitely help me and my teammates in our future careers.”
As a world-class industrial automation brand, Delta has been enhancing industrial technology while sharing experience and techniques with talented students and academics through academia-industrial cooperation. Since 2008, Delta has launched academia-industrial cooperation projects with dozens of colleges and universities in Taiwan and China. Delta has donated automation products, built a “Delta Laboratory”, and more. Delta also plans to extend this project to other Asian countries such as Thailand and India, hoping to cultivate and find more talent for its “Automation for a Changing World”.