Category Award A New Society in the Age of Society 5.0 Infrastructure Category
Digital Transformation (DX) Category Award

Grand Prix

Outline

These days attending a sporting event is not necessarily easy or possible. This remote cheering system allows sports fans to cheer for the players and teams they support without having to leave home. To cheer, fans tap a button on their smartphones while watching a TV sports broadcast or streaming service. Their cheers – potentially from all over the world – can be heard from speakers installed at the actual venue. This system is also contributing to the realization of diversity-conscious cheering and to the prevention of Covid-19 in the sports industry. It is helping to create a new cheering culture through collaboration with Japan’s J-League (professional football) as well as professional baseball.

Assessment

This innovative system delivers remote spectators’ vocal support to the venue – a completely new way of cheering, never before possible in the long history of sports broadcasting. As well as transmitting the cheers of those spectators who are unable to watch the game in person for whatever reason, it can also deliver live feeds. The cheers can be heard by the players or athletes from the speakers at the venue, even at closed events which spectators are not allowed to attend. This system has already been introduced for various sports. Additionally, cheering behavior and other data is expected to be of economic benefit (monetization and fan services). The award also recognizes its potential to motivate players.

Semi Grand Prix

Smart Checkout System – Equipped with Kyocera’s AI Object Recognition Technology

Kyocera Corporation

Exhibit Area:General Exhibit Area

Outline

There are growing needs to improve efficiency and save labor with store operations and to reduce instances of interpersonal contact in this era of the “new normal”. Kyocera’s image-recognition-type smart unmanned cash register system for the retail industry can recognize multiple overlapping products with high accuracy using a single camera, thanks to its unique object recognition AI technology. This technology has also succeeded in significantly reducing the learning time required for new product registration compared to conventional methods.

Assessment

A smart cash register system that meets the need for efficiency and labor saving in store operations while reducing interpersonal contact as part of infection control measures. It’s unique image recognition AI enables the system to recognize multiple overlapping products with a single camera, reducing the burden on users and the need for store clerk support. Requiring less equipment for implementation and enabling additional registration of new products (through AI learning) contributes to cost reductions with installation and operation. The system was also evaluated for its potential application to other types of business such as restaurants and supermarkets, and other image recognition technologies such as inspection work and automated driving.

CEATEC AWARD 2021: Award categories and judging criteria

The awards will be selected from technologies, products, services, solutions, and business models that promote digital transformation (DX) in various fields of industry, business activities, society, and daily life in response to the transformation of society in the age of the “New Normal”, and that are recognized for their superb innovativeness, concrete feasibility and marketability.