[News Release] Department of Information Management, Cheng Shiu University, has once again achieved outstanding success! At the “2025 30th National College Information Application Service Innovation Competition” jointly hosted by the Ministry of Digital Affairs, the Ministry of Education, and CSIM, the Smart Maker Center Team from the Department of Information Management won the ‌1st Place in the Information Application Category‌ with their innovative work, the “‌AI Automatic Badminton Ball Collector.”‌ This achievement highlights the department’s strong R&D capabilities and educational outcomes in the field of artificial intelligence innovation applications.

Among numerous outstanding teams, ‌Po-Hsiang Chen‌, a student of the master’s program from the Department of Information Management, Cheng Shiu University, stood out with the “‌AI Automatic Badminton Ball Collector”‌ and secured the ‌1st Place in the Information Application Category‌. This work integrates ‌AI image recognition, object tracking, distance sensors, and autonomous navigation control technology‌. It can ‌real-time detect badminton balls on the court, automatically navigate to collect them, and return them to a designated location‌. The device demonstrates ‌obstacle avoidance, precise positioning, and efficient operation‌, successfully addressing the problem of time-consuming and inconvenient manual ball collection on courts.

Professor Chun-Hsiung Lee‌, the supervising professor, noted that the most distinctive highlights of this work are “innovation” and “practicality.” Although badminton is a widely popular sport, ‌no one has previously developed a machine capable of automatically collecting badminton balls‌. Therefore, this work is of ‌high value from both demand and creative perspectives‌.

Chun-Hsiung Lee pointed out that the success of the work lies not only in the AI recognition technology but also in the ‌“completeness of AI and mechanical integration.”‌ He stated that “Even if the AI is powerful, the purpose cannot be achieved if the mechanical structure cannot truly pick up the badminton balls.” Students put in significant effort in the mechanical design, including how to prevent the balls from being damaged, how to gently collect them, and how to automatically align the badminton balls in the same direction. These are all highly challenging technical breakthroughs.

Mr. Po-Hsiang Chen indicated that the inspiration for this work stemmed from his personal passion for badminton. As a long-time player, he deeply experienced the problem of “time-consuming and inconvenient ball collection,” thus conceiving the idea of developing an automatic ball-collecting robot. He hopes that at the end of practice, a machine can automatically gather the scattered badminton balls on the court and even assist with ball collection during training to improve practice efficiency. He said, “Whenever I had an idea but lacked parts, the teacher would find a way to support me. I could complete this work thanks to the teacher’s great assistance.”

      The competition was held on November 1st at National Taiwan University, attracting ‌151 colleges and universities‌, ‌1,964 teams, and ‌9,781 participants‌, setting a new record for scale. Ultimately, ‌414 outstanding domestic and international teams‌ successfully advanced to the finals, competing for ‌175 awards‌, with extremely fierce competition.