School of Engineering and Technology, Walailak University congratulates Assoc. Prof. Dr. Wattanapong Kurdthongmee, a lecturer at the school, and Ms. Watcharin Kongsawat, a staff member at the Center for Science and Technology Instruments, for being granted a petty patent on their invention, the “Rubber log rotation machine for automatic wood axis orientation,” on March 10, 2023.
The device was designed to help limit the number of cores in a single plank and achieve the largest number of planks from a log. It does not require users to have expertise in wood processing.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Wattanapong Kurdthongmee, a researcher from the Computer Engineering and Artificial Intelligence department at the School of Engineering and Technology, led the research and development of a wood core detection system using deep neural network techniques. The system connects to rubber wood processing plants and reduces the amount of rubber wood loss from the process of cutting wood that attaches a lot of cores or fillings.
Currently, the processing of rubber wood in Thailand requires human labor called “horse master” and “horsetail” to observe the wood core and cut it into wood sheets. This requires experience and expertise, and there is a shortage of skilled workers in this field. Additionally, the characteristics of rubber wood, such as crooked wood fillings or cores that vary from batch to batch, result in more planks being attached to the core than usual. This leads to damaged wood and loss of value during the baking process.
Rubber wood is a vital raw material for the production of furniture, parquet, and children’s toys, as well as exports in the form of logs and lumber, which are among Thailand’s top exports. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Wattanapong Kurdthongmee and his research team used artificial intelligence to develop a solution to this problem.
