Hyunwoo Jo, a sophomore global affairs major, and a team of Mason Korea students recently participated in the Last Mile Delivery Living Lab Season 2 program.
A program organized by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) and sponsored by the Incheon Free Economic Zone (IFEZ), Incheon Startup Park, and Yonsei University, the Last Mile Delivery Living Lab project seeks to solve the food delivery problem in Songdo International Business District through a delivery robot operated by MESH Korea.
“I found the prospect of beta-testing and developing new technologies to be implemented in the Incheon Global Campus (IGC) for future deliveries to be incredibly interesting,” said Jo, who is looking to minor in computational and data sciences (CDS).
The program spanned six weeks from November through December, culminating in an award ceremony held in January. Hyunwoo Jo, who also serves as Mason Korea’s Student Council President, represented his team (Team 3) and presented prototypes to be considered for the final implementation stages of the delivery robot and application.
Four other Mason Korea students were also part of Team 3: Jaewon Kim (Business, '24), Seoyoon Cho (Global Affairs, '25), Jeehye Yoo (Economics, '26), and Nayeong Shin (Global Affairs, '25).
Jo’s eleven-member team focused primarily on issues that may arise during the delivery process after the food deliverer hands off items to the robot. The team was tasked with planning a sequence diagram to brainstorm which modules and when they need to be used in the process (including the camera, magnetic, real-time clock, and shock sensors).
Jo oversaw the implementation of his team’s idea, wiring such modules and programming code to be used with Arduino microcontrollers to record the timestamp when the robot detects a crash or shock, and to take real-time photos in the process of delivering items to each room for users to check after the delivery has been completed.
“The program challenged me to not only use the theoretical programming knowledge I had learned in my CDS classes, but also to effectively use and apply our prototypes in the real world with delivery robots,” said Jo. “The entire process required a combination of critical thinking and troubleshooting skills as well as working with peers at Mason Korea and other universities to handle different responsibilities and tasks,” he added.
March 16, 2023