Members of NavaLab-TH Win Mirai Catalyst Hackathon Challenge 2026 with ScanTu

The National Research Council of Thailand (NRCT), under the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation, together with the Thai Students' Association in Japan under Royal Patronage (TSAJ) and the network of Thai researchers in Japan, held the "Mirai Catalyst Hackathon Challenge 2026" on August 9, 2026 in Tokyo, to help Thai students and researchers in Japan turn their knowledge and technology into innovations with real-world use. At the Final Pitch round, held at Miraikan – The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, nine innovation projects were presented to a panel of expert judges.

In the judging round, team Krapao Desu — featuring NavaLab-TH members Thanapol Kidprasert and Athiphach Jirachokthanasak — won first place with "ScanTu: Digital Inspection Solution," an automated shipping-container inspection system. It combines an OCR, multi-camera exterior scan at the gate with a 360 Rover robot that scans the interior using an 8K camera and high-brightness LED lighting, then processes the results through a three-tier AI pipeline: damage detection with YOLO-seg and YOLO-NAS, damage measurement with Mask R-CNN, and reasoning with a Vision-Language Model. The system references the ISO 6346 and ISO 668/1496 standards and IICL-6 damage criteria, works alongside human inspectors in a human-in-the-loop workflow, and outputs a standardized Equipment Interchange Receipt (EIR) and digital twin. It cuts container inspection time from roughly 12 minutes to about 7 minutes per container — around 42% faster.

The Final Pitch event was opened online by Dr. Wipharat Dee-ong, Executive Director of the National Research Council of Thailand, with Ms. Natha Udommongkolkul, Consul and Advisor at the Royal Thai Embassy in Tokyo, welcoming participants in person. Three expert judges evaluated the projects. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Anak Khantachawana, head of the Mirai Catalyst project, said the initiative's core goal is for Thai researchers in Japan to learn to work across disciplines and build a network that connects research to economic and social impact back in Thailand.