Recently, in the 6th TE AI Cup Global Competition hosted by TE Connectivity (“TE”), a global leader in industrial technology, teams from Southwest University of Finance and Economics and South China University of Technology from China claimed the championship titles with their outstanding performance. As a global event focused on cultivating artificial intelligence (AI) literacy among university engineering students, this year’s TE AI Cup attracted 50 teams from 24 universities worldwide, involving nearly 300 students—setting a new record for participant numbers.
The TE AI Cup serves as a global platform for engineering students to apply AI technology in solving real-world industrial challenges. The competition aims to accelerate the application of AI in manufacturing and engineering, while fostering the next generation of outstanding engineering talent. Since its inception in 2018, the TE AI Cup has grown into an international hub for university students worldwide. Participating teams dive into TE’s manufacturing facilities across Asia, the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, collaborating closely with TE engineers to tackle technical challenges using AI. Over the years, the event has expanded steadily in scale, with increasingly sophisticated technical challenges. Not only has the number of global participants risen annually, but the solutions proposed by teams have also become more mature.
In the current era of rapid AI development, the TE AI Cup bridges academic research outcomes with actual industrial needs. This year, participating teams developed advanced AI solutions targeting key pain points in manufacturing processes, such as improving quality inspection efficiency, optimizing data annotation costs, and enhancing production scheduling. Among them, the innovative solutions from the two Chinese champion teams have achieved remarkable results and are already being deployed at TE’s manufacturing bases, providing valuable practical examples for AI-driven industrial modernization.
In manufacturing, the use of AI visual inspection for product quality testing and model training commonly faces challenges such as insufficient inspection sample data and high energy consumption. To address these issues, the Wolo team from Southwest University of Finance and Economics collaborated with TE engineers to develop an automatic annotation and inspection system based on limited samples. Through algorithm optimization, the AI prediction model achieved an accuracy rate of 98.8%, with annotation efficiency 100 times higher than manual operations. After deployment on edge terminal devices, energy consumption was significantly reduced by 90%. Currently, the system has been implemented on the production line at TE’s Foshan Shunde manufacturing base and is planned for deployment across over 50 TE manufacturing bases worldwide.
Wolo Team from Southwest University of Finance and Economics
Meanwhile, the Dream Wings team from South China University of Technology partnered with engineers at TE’s Shenzhen manufacturing base to develop an AI intelligent inspection solution specifically designed for electronic assembly processes. Equipped with a user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI), the solution seamlessly integrates functions such as image collection, data annotation, AI model training, and real-time inspection. Powered by advanced AI algorithms, the system achieves an inspection accuracy of 99.2% and efficiency 100 times higher than manual operations. Currently, 3 sets of the system are in operation at TE’s Shenzhen manufacturing base, with 9 more sets in preparation for deployment. This breakthrough technology holds strong application potential globally at TE, with plans to be rolled out to over 100 TE manufacturing bases.
Dream Wings Team from South China University of Technology
Dr. Lu Yi, Founder of the TE AI Cup and TE’s Vice President of Global Operations Technology, stated: “The TE AI Cup aims to encourage global university AI talent to join hands with TE in the wave of AI transformation. This year, participating teachers, students, and TE engineers have demonstrated exceptional AI innovation capabilities and professional competence. The application results they developed have exceeded our expectations, injecting endless possibilities into reshaping the future of manufacturing.”
University teams from around the world
Ms. Xu Hong from South China University of Technology commented: “The TE AI Cup provides students with opportunities to collaborate with TE engineers, helping them gain valuable practical experience. This is crucial for cultivating versatile engineering talent with both technical depth and practical capabilities.
As a global industrial technology leader, TE has long regarded advancing next-generation science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education as a core part of its corporate social responsibility strategy. Since 2020, TE’s STEM education charitable funding programs have benefited over 5 million young people worldwide, moving toward the goal of “impacting more than 10 million people by 2030.” Through industry-academia-research integration platforms like the TE AI Cup, TE will continue to nurture engineering talent with strong technical capabilities and forward-thinking innovation for the industry. Preparation for the 7th TE AI Cup Global Competition in 2026 is now underway, with plans to further expand the event’s scale and inspire more young engineering talent to engage in AI and manufacturing innovation.
(Reprinted from China Grid https://news.eccn.com)