Innovative Achievements from Southeast University Win Grand Prize and First Prize at the National AI Application Scene Innovation Challenge
Recently, at the national finals of the 3rd National Artificial Intelligence Application Scene Innovation Challenge, a team led by Professor Ye Yujian from the School of Electrical Engineering, Southeast University, as the principal supervisor, won two major awards.
The project “Smart Navigation Across Wind and Waves, Breaking Barriers in Dual Domains – An Intelligent Amphibious Unmanned Transportation System”, jointly submitted by Southeast University, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Imperial College London, and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, with Dr. Wu Yizhi from the School of Electrical Engineering, Southeast University, as the student principal investigator, was awarded the Grand Prize in the national finals.
The project “ePortSimAI – An AI Agent for Integrated Simulation of Electrified Port Logistics and Energy Flows”, jointly submitted with the University of Nottingham Ningbo China, received the First Prize.
With the theme “Scene-Driven Innovation for a Digital and Intelligent Nation”, the challenge was guided by the Department of Strategic Planning, Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China, and hosted by the Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence (CAAI). It aims to keep pace with global trends in the scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, and further advance the innovation-driven development strategy and the national “Artificial Intelligence Plus” initiative.
Since its launch, the competition has attracted 3,314 teams from key universities, research institutes, and technology enterprises at home and abroad. Among them, the “Intelligent Amphibious Unmanned Transportation System” project by Professor Ye Yujian’s team stood out for its outstanding performance in functional realization, technological maturity, and application scenario innovation. It was awarded the Grand Prize (only 5 awarded nationwide in the University Seed Group) and selected as a National Typical Case of Artificial Intelligence Application Scenarios. Professor Ye Yujian was also honored with the Excellent Supervisor Award.
Artificial intelligence has become a strategic high ground in global scientific and technological competition, and application scenarios closely aligned with real-world demands are an important cornerstone for unlocking technological potential and driving technological maturity.
The Grand Prize project actively responds to the national strategies of “Maritime Power”, “Low-Altitude Economy”, and “Artificial Intelligence Plus”, promoting the transformation of the traditional transportation and delivery industry toward electrification, unmanned operation, and intelligence. By collaborating with multiple universities, Professor Ye’s team proposed a full-chain AI-enabled architecture covering perception, decision-making, and control. Integrated with intelligent hardware integrated design, the team built a dual-use (military and civilian) aerial-aquatic amphibious unmanned vehicle, targeting typical application scenarios such as offshore wind farm inspection, material transportation, emergency support, and national defense. This achievement lays a solid foundation for the development of intelligent aerial-aquatic unmanned systems in China and fully demonstrates the team’s solid technical accumulation and efficient achievement transformation capability.
The First Prize project focuses on the national strategies of “Smart Port and Shipping”, “Electrified Transportation”, and “Artificial Intelligence Plus”, committed to promoting the high-quality development transformation of port hubs toward digitalization, greenization, and intelligence.
Through in-depth cooperation with the University of Nottingham Ningbo China, Professor Ye’s team proposed an integrated technical system of digital twin, intelligent decision-making, and integrated control. Integrating multi-modal Real2Sim2Real digital twins with a data-model dual-driven decision-making method, the team constructed an ePort series (SimX/LogicX/EnergyX) AI agent cluster. This achievement has been successfully applied in leading ports such as Ningbo Zhoushan Port, serving key scenarios including intelligent logistics scheduling, multi-energy synergy optimization, and low-carbon operation, and achieving remarkable cost reduction, efficiency improvement, and carbon emission reduction.
Contributed by: Ye Yujian
Preliminary Review: Zhong Linlin
Final Review: Gu Wei
