IEICE Society Conference (Nippon Institute of Technology Saitama Campus)

The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE) holds conferences twice a year. The Fall 2024 conference was held from September 10 to 13 at the Saitama campus of the Nippon Institute of Technology.

The campus was spacious and lined with new school buildings.

The classrooms where the general sessions were held were also very clean and comfortable.

The large classroom where the special sessions were held was also comfortable.

I also gave a presentation in the Smart Radio session titled “Clock and orbit augmentation of PPP-B2b signals broadcast by the BeiDou positioning satellite.”

A GPS grass-cutting robot was running around on the campus lawn. After finishing cutting the grass on this lawn, the robot will automatically cut the grass in the next place or return to the charging station.

Just inside the main gate of the university, there is the Industrial Technology Museum. There are various machine tools on display. There is also a high-precision prism used for surveying. If you get permission, you can take photos and post them on your own website.

You can visit this museum freely, but there are guided tours at set times. The conference started at 9:00, and I visited the museum at 8:30. I enjoyed it so much that I also joined the guided tour organized by the conference. During the guided tour, they actually operated the machinery, which was very fun.

Next to the museum, there was a “Moha 1-103” train on display, which once climbed the slopes of Hakone. This train had a wooden body manufactured in 1919, and was converted to a semi-rigid body in 1950. “Mo” stands for electric car, “Ha” for regular seating car, and “1” for cars under 20 meters long. It used a hanging drive mechanism to climb the steep slopes of Hakone. During the guided tour, they opened and closed the doors for me.

The university also has a steam locomotive and a track on which it can run. It was manufactured in 1891 and was used on the Tohoku Main Line and Chuo Main Line before being transferred to the Seino Railway in 1928 and placed in static preservation in 1976. It was then donated to the Nippon Institute of Technology in 1992 and has been preserved in working order since 1993! On the first day of the academic conference, it was actually running with a fire lit.

We also had the chance to see inside the locomotive, which was a lot of fun.

The society also organized a tour to the Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism’s Edogawa River Office. I participated in this tour during my free time in the afternoon on the last day of the society. In this area, there was a lot of damage caused by the Tone River, Edo River, and Arakawa River overflowing during heavy rains and accumulating in the dish-like topography. Therefore, in order to reduce such damage, the discharge channel and huge underground water tank were constructed. This disaster prevention facility is open to the public when it is not in operation. This time, thanks to the society arranging a bus, I was able to tour the site in a short time.

I went there the day before the conference to check the route to the university.

Afterwards, I had some time, so I also went to Tobu Zoo near the university. This park consists of an amusement park and a zoo. I met the white lion, which is the zoo’s signature animal.

There were seals and penguins too, it was fun.

In March of this year, a facility where you can see fireflies was opened for an additional fee, but I didn’t have enough time to see them.