A design team, led by Professor Hui Sung Lee in the Department of Design at UNIST has recently been honored with the Excellence Award at the 18th Korea Robotics Society Annual Conference Robot Engineering & Design Show, also known as the KRoC RED Show.
The KRoC Red Show is an annual event, jointly organized by the Korea Robotics Society (KROS) and the Korea Institute For Robot Industry Advancement (KIRIA). It is also a competition where robotics and related design works are created to solve real-world problems are demonstrated and their functions, performance, and commercial value are being evaluated.
Under the theme of ‘Do Robotics Dream of the Next 20 Years?,’ this year’s competition was held in Phoenix Pyungchang from February 15 to 18, 2023.
A design team, led by Professor Hui Sung Lee (far right) from the Department of Design at UNIST has recently been honored with the Excellence Award at the 2023 KRoC RED Show. l Image Credit: DECS Lab
Only eight teams were advanced to the finals, including UNIST. At the award presentation ceremony, which took place on the last day of the competition, 1 Grand Prize and 3 Excellence Prize were selected. Professor Lee and his design team proposed a new robotic design concept, namely ALH-E (ALternative Healthcare for Expressing ache), and thus being recognized with the Excellence Award.
ALH-E is an assistive robot design concept that has been designed to improve patient-clinician communication about pain. The term ‘ALH-E‘ has been derived from the Korean word ‘앓이,’ meaning ‘aches’ or ‘pains,’ as in stomachache or chest pain. It is capable of recognizing the levels of chronic pain and stress felt by the patients who often have difficulty expressing their opinions through words or gestures, and express them on their behalf in the form of bending or twisting of certain parts.
A research paper on ALE-E has also been recognized with the Outstanding Paper Award at the 2022 Human Computer Interaction (HCI) in Korea, and related domestic and foreign patent applications are still pending.
