Professor Sang Hoon Kang of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UNIST has been honored with the Most Cited Article Award from the International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing (IJPEM), a leading international journal in robotics and manufacturing engineering.
The award recognizes researchers whose work has demonstrated outstanding academic impact. Professor Kang’s paper was selected as the most cited paper published in IJPEM between 2023 and 2024, highlighting its influence within the field of robot control and manufacturing engineering.
Their paper, titled ‘A Review on Robust Control of Robot Manipulators for Future Manufacturing,‘ was published in the April 2023 issue of IJPEM. The review examines robust control techniques for robot manipulators, with a particular focus on the theoretical development and practical applicability of Time-Delay Control (TDC).
In the paper, Professor Kang brings together more than three decades of accumulated research on TDC, offering a systematic overview of its evolution and use in real-world applications. He shows that TDC enables stable and efficient control of complex robotic systems—including humanoid robots, rehabilitation robots, and industrial manipulators—despite the challenges posed by nonlinearity and time-varying dynamics. The study has been widely cited for providing a clear and comprehensive reference long sought by researchers in the field.
Reflecting on the award, Professor Kang said, “This work is meaningful in that it presents, for the first time, a comprehensive review of control methods that can be applied in practice even to highly nonlinear and complex robotic systems. The citation record shows that many researchers have been seeking a systematic understanding of TDC.” He added, “I will continue to pursue research on more robust and efficient control techniques that can be applied across a wide range of robotic systems, including humanoid and rehabilitation robots.”
