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▲ Professor Kyu-Jin Cho

SNU’s College of Engineering has revealed that professor Kyu-Jin Cho of MAE has won the first RoboSoft Grand Challenge (RoboSoft GC) held in Livorno, Italy on the 30^th of April

RoboSoft GC was the world’s first soft robotics competition held as a part of EU Soft Robotics Week 2016. It was managed by the EU Combined Research Project Group RoboSoft comprised of robotics researchers from all over the world, and was funded by the and < Frontiers in Robotics and AI Journal>.

23 teams from 12 institutes from 8 countries were part of this competition, including Cambridge, Bristol of the UK, Nanyang Technological University from Singapore, Tufts form America and the ITT from Italy. Professor Kyu-Jin Cho‘s team with the armadillo inspired SNUMAX and the S.I.R. (snail inspired robot) which out extend its antennas managed to claim a prestigious win.

Within the playing field, 6 missions including tasks such as avoiding obstacles, climbing stairs and grabbing objects were given. SNUMAX, a wheel based robot named after Mad Max and SNU, was the only robot that managed to complete all 6 missions. Researcher Jun Young Lee mentioned that “There was an incident were an important part of the robot broke on the previous day of the competition but we are happy with the good results”.

Professor Kyu-Jin Cho who led the winning team said that “ Using origami theories to control the wheel’s size without air pressure was accepted as innovative” and that “It was an opportunity to review our competency in a new research sector called soft robotics.”

Who is Professor Kyu-Jin Cho?

A young researcher recognized nationally in the field of soft robotics. In 2014, he received the IEEE RAS Early Career Award with this soft robot and a biomimicry robot. In 2015 he was the first person in SNU to be mentioned in the journal with the invention of the water strider robot and began becoming recognized publicly. Early this year, he also went viral with the invention of a glove type robot called the Exo-Glove Poly in the American science society AAAS aimed to help the disabled.

What is a Soft Robot?

It is a combined sector being globally recognized from its beginnings of the limitations of hard, metallic hardware in robots. The industry can be best described by mimicry of the soft bodies and mechanisms of soft organisms such as octopuses or snakes and making robots with flexible and elastic polymers. The main aim lies in completing tasks in unregulated conditions in areas such as mountains or oceans and even wearable tech.

It is an active industry nationally, labelled as a future technology predicting ERC currently receiving massive funds from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and the Ministry of Science ICT and Future Planning.

■ Competition Photography