Korea Polytechnics Ulsan wins gold at 2026 World Invention Creativity Olympics

Korea Polytechnics' Ulsan campus announced Wednesday that its electrical engineering students had won a gold award at the 2026 World Invention Creativity Olympics (WICO).

Now in its 15th edition, the competition drew more than 2,000 youths, university students and researchers from 25 countries. Co-organized by the World Invention and Intellectual Property Association (WIPA) and the Korea University Invention Association, the event ran from Thursday to Saturday at Seoul National University of Education.

The Ulsan team — students Ji Sin-yeong, Lee Byeong-hoe and An Tae-yang, advised by professor Jo Yeong-jin — entered an AI-powered emergency exit guidance system and earned high marks for its originality and potential for immediate deployment in industrial settings.

The system addresses a gap in current disaster response: conventional evacuation signs do not indicate which direction evacuees should move. By linking AI to a central control server, it can assess conditions in real time and direct residents to the appropriate exit — the ground floor or the rooftop — when, for example, a fire breaks out on the fifth floor of an apartment building.

"Through this competition, I gained confidence in my major and the drive to grow into an engineer who develops technology that can be put to use on the job," said An Tae-yang, one of the students who worked on the project.