October 28, 2024
At the 2024 Japanese Society of Limnology National Conference, held at the Faculty of Science, Kumamoto University from Friday, October 18th to Sunday, October 20th, 2024, Shuhei Yamaguchi (4th year, Faculty of Science and Engineering) presented his research and won the Outstanding Presentation Award.
Yamaguchi, who belongs to the Faculty of Science and Engineering Department of Information and Electronic Engineering, has been working under Professor Hasuda Yuichi of the same faculty since September 2023 to develop and analyze an ecological observation system for aquatic organisms using artificial intelligence (AI), and presented the results under the title "Analysis of behavior in the burrows of giant whitefly larvae using AI." The ecology of giant whitefly larvae, which live in unique U-shaped burrows in the bottom of a rapid river, remained a mystery for 100 years since the new species was described in 1924, but using a small observation robot equipped with an infrared camera developed by Yamaguchi, the world's first image capture of the larvae's ecological behavior, such as movement and feeding.
This presentation received words of praise from researchers across the country for its interdisciplinary use of AI and robotics, and during the question and answer session, he carefully answered questions about the robot's behavior within the burrow, demonstrating the high level of development and quality of our university's robotics and AI research.
We have high expectations for Yamaguchi's future success.