KAIST (Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) announced on the 6th that Professor Yoo Hwi-hwan's paper was selected for the Best Paper Award of the Robotics and Automation Letters at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2025.
ICRA is a global robotics academic conference hosted by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), held annually since 1984. This year, it took place from the 19th to the 23rd of last month in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
This Best Paper Award was awarded to only the top 5 out of approximately 1,500 papers published in 2024. Professor Yoo's team received the award for proposing a new technique to secure the practicality and applicability of "soft growing robots." Soft growing robots are soft material-based robots that perform movement and tasks by growing like plant roots.
Professor Yoo's team solved the problem where existing soft growing robots move by inflating and deflating their bodies through increased or decreased internal pressure, causing the internal channels to be blocked by the pressure.
The team implemented a growing function while maintaining the internal channel pressure of the soft growing robot equal to the external atmospheric pressure and succeeded in securing the internal channel while preserving the robot's flexible and soft characteristics.
Through this, various materials or tools can be freely conveyed through the internal channel (working channel) of the robot, enabling flexible equipment replacement depending on the working environment and allowing the robot to perform tasks for various purposes.
The research team produced a prototype and verified the corresponding performance through various experiments. In particular, in the slide plate experiment, they checked whether materials or equipment could pass through the robot's internal channel without obstruction, and in the pipe pulling experiment, they confirmed whether a long pipe-shaped tool could be pulled out through the internal channel.
Professor Yoo noted, "This award is very meaningful in that Korea's robotics technology and academic achievements have been recognized globally," adding that "it is particularly significant that we have made technological advancements that can greatly expand the practicality and applications of soft growing robots."
This research involved doctoral students Seo Dong-oh from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Kim Nam-kyun from the Robotics interdisciplinary major as co-authors, and it was published on September 1 of last year in the Robotics and Automation Letters journal. This project was supported simultaneously by the National Research Foundation of Korea's promising convergence technology pioneer research project and mid-sized research project.