Proposed ‘smart rainroof bus’ and received good reviews for its ‘creativity, marketability, realistic possibility’
Improved capacities in majors through ‘C++ Camp’, ‘Embedded Camp’ and academic club activities during vacation
Professors provided instructions at camps and clubs to raise satisfaction levels and capacities of students
[September 12, 2017]
<The YU Department of Information and Communication Engineering HOWTO Team awarded at the ‘4th Korean SW Convergence Hackathon Contest’.>
(back row, left to right: Yang Hyun-gyu, Lee Yun-ho, Professor Kim Young-tak, front row left to right: Heo Jin-woo, Kim Ji-hyeon, Jang Ji-mo, Ha Dong-soo)
Students from the YU Department of Information and Communication were awarded at the ‘4th Korean SW Conversion Hackathon Contest’.
This contest, which is the nation’s largest SW convergence technology contest, was held for three days at the Kyungpook National University Global Plaza from the 31st of last month to September 2 hosted by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the National IT Promotion Agency. Hackathon is a word combining the two words of ‘hacking’ and ‘marathon’. Like a marathon, participants come up with ideas, engage in programming, and build creative works without resting for 42.195 hours.
This contest was comprised of the three themes of ‘free topic’, ‘development of services for improving common life’, and utilization of public-data based water resources and development of flood prevention services’. A total of 296 people in 60 teams announced their unique ideas. In result, the ‘HOWTO’ team comprised of Heo Jin-woo (25), who graduated, and juniors Ha Dong-soo (24), Yang Hyun-gyu (24), Lee Yun-ho (22), Jang Ji-mo (22), and Kim Ji-hyun (20) of the YU Department of Information and Communication Engineering was awarded in the free topic sector.
The idea proposed by the HOWTO team was the ‘Smart Rainroof Bus’. They designed functions in which wipers would activate automatically and a rain roof would operate automatically when opening and closing doors for passengers by detecting rain while the bus is operating. Their idea received good reviews in terms of creativity, marketability and realistic possibility.
Team leader of HOWTO Heo Jin-woo said, “We thought about ways to improve user convenience by integrating IoT in buses that we use every day, and came up with this unique idea during our brainstorming session.”
All of the students that were awarded were under the YU Department of Information and Communication Engineering’s HOWTO club (Advisor Kim Young-tak). The network programming academic club ‘HOWTO’ started in 2000 with 11 students, and gained popularity now having over 100 students participating in the club activities.
They all said in unison, “The major capacity improvement camp operated during summer break by the department helped a lot in making it possible to come up with ideas, program, and configure prototypes in a short period of three days.”
In addition to the regular curriculum, the students of the YU Department of Information and Communication participated in the ‘C++ Camp’ and ‘Embedded Camp’ during breaks to learn programming languages. Based on this, they applied it in hardware and improved their capacities through 3-4 week concentrated learning sessions. Despite these classes not being part of the regular curriculum, professors instructed the students to enhance student satisfaction levels, while also helping them to improve their capacities in their majors.
Department of Information and Communication Engineering Professor Kim Young-tak, who is the advisor of the HOWTO club said, “It might be a bit difficult to follow classes in majors in the beginning,” and added, “If students participate in camps and programs on their majors during their vacation or through academic clubs aside from regular classes, it will help them gain more interest in studying their major.”
