The 41st Beijing Youth Science and Technology Innovation Competition recently came to an end. 

Projects by six student inventors from the BDA School of the High School Affiliated to Renmin University of China and Beijing E-Town Academy stood out from 2,045 participating projects in Beijing, and won four second prizes covering engineering, life science and environmental science.

Shan Xinyue, a student from the BDA School of the High School Affiliated to Renmin University of China, used software and hardware technologies such as video recognition and open source hardware to design a self-service weighing and vending machine for vegetables and fruit. It has voice guidance, video recognition of agricultural products, weighing, automatic pricing and other functions.

Shan's classmates Cao Tianyi and He Jiacheng worked together to design a robot that uses sensors to analyze soil moisture and uploads the data to a cloud server using the Internet of Things, and transmits the data to mobile phones in real time. The micro-irrigation robot automatically adjusts sprinklers according to the soil moisture level to properly irrigate crops.

Yu Ziqi and Zhen Yuhang from Beijing E-Town Academy developed their project's theme together. 

After choosing the category "smart planting", they tried different approaches before coming up with their project – the "Internet of Things-based Intelligent Greenhouse Monitoring and Control System". 

The system uses sensors to collect and monitor environmental information such as temperature, humidity, and light intensity in greenhouses in real time, and analyzes and compares the collected environmental data with preset thresholds.

Yu Ziqi and Zhen Yuhang from Beijing E-Town Academy and their project. [Photo/kfqgw.beijing.gov.cn]

Zhang Kairuo, a sophomore from Beijing E-Town Academy, won an award for a bio-recycling method that improves the efficiency of plastic degradation.