<’IM.DOT’ team of YU that won the grand prize at the ‘2020 Engineering Festival’ creative general design contest>
(Bottom left to righ: Koo Joon-beom, Ji Joon-young, Koh Se-rim, Park Yu-na / top left to right: Kwon Hyuk-joon, Yang Sung-eung, Kang Min-ji, Han Kuk-young)
YU students won the grand prize at the ‘2020 Engineering Festival’ creative general design contest. YU won the grand prize in last year’s contest and won again this year for the second consecutive time.
In the 2020 Engineering Festival’s ‘creative general design contest’ held from November 23 to 27, about 150 teams participated, revealing their creative ideas. The ‘IM.DOT’ team (advisor Kim Young-tak) comprised of nine juniors such as Koo Joon-beom (23), Ji Joon-young (23), Koh Se-rim (22), Park Yu-na (21) and Yang Sung-eun (21) of the Department of Information and Communication Engineering, Kwon Hyuk-joon (24), Han Kuk-young (24) and Kang Min-ji (21) of the School of Mechanical Engineering, and Kim Kyung-hee of the Department of Business Administration won the grand prize and received the Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Award.
The work submitted by ‘IM.DOT’ was the ‘mobile smart braille printer & app (IM.DOT).’ They developed a mobile braille printer and application for the visually impaired to address their inconveniences to distinguish objects in everyday life.
It has higher recognition rates than bar code scanners used when scanning items, and it adjusts the speed of voice messages to greatly improve convenience. When the item bar code is scanned through the ‘IM.DOT’ application, the detailed product information is voice notified. By synchronizing the ‘IM.DOT’ app with the mobile smart braille printer, it can be printed in braille immediately. By using the memo pad function of the ‘IM.DOT’ application, it is possible to print a message directly on the mobile braille printer, therefore, making it possible for it to be used by the visually impaired.
‘IM.DOT’ team leader Park Yu-na said, “Our team came up with this idea after reading an article explaining that most beverage vending machines in the market do not have braille and the braille indicated on products for sale only offer limited information, causing inconveniences for the visually impaired. Our team worked hard for six months to produce an application that can offer detailed product information to the visually impaired using a smart device and to build a mobile braille printer prototype. We hope that it will help the visually impaired to live a more independent life. I believe that with a little more revisions and supplementation of product bar code information linking, it is a technology that can be commercialized.”
The ‘IM.DOT’ team applied for a patent for the newly developed ‘mobile smart braille printer.’
Meanwhile, the ‘2020 Engineering Festival’ is an event sponsored by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and co-hosted by the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology and the Engineering Education Innovation Association and this year, it was held under the theme, ‘Engineering Challenge Week, Continuing Challenge.’ This event was held contact-free using online platforms such as homepage and YouTube due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
