A mobile collaborative robot developed by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) has received global recognition by winning the grand prize at the German International Design Competition, one of the world's top three design award competitions.

ETRI announced on the 18th that the teach pendant SW for its autonomous mobile collaborative robot (MOBY) won the grand prize in the user experience (UX) category of the 'iF Design Award 2024', an international design competition in Germany.

ETRI has been recognized for its capabilities in the UX sector with the 'MOBY SW', a mobile robot-based manipulator teach pendant jointly developed by Neuromeka and the research team of Professor Seung-Heon Yoo of the Department of Design at Korea University.

The research team's award-winning work is the Teach Pendant application, a user interface SW for autonomous mobile collaborative robots. This app has received favorable reviews for its user-friendly and intuitive design.

ETRI was responsible for the overall UX design and development of the Teach Pendant (mobile app).

Korea University was in charge of the UX/UI design for the mobile manipulator teach pendant app, while Neuromeka developed the hardware and framework for the mobile manipulator.

A mobile manipulator is a combination of a wheeled mobile robot that can move and a manipulator, which is a robot arm for work.
br /> Refers to a robot that performs movement and manipulation tasks while being controlled simultaneously.

MOBY SW has significantly improved the inconvenience faced by users by configuring existing teach pendant products to separately teach mobile robots and manipulators to instruct robots.

It has become possible to simultaneously teach the movement and operation of mobile robots and manipulators through a single SW.

The ETRI research team explained that the developed teach pendant can be used to simultaneously set destinations and movement paths for autonomous driving of mobile robots and teach manipulators how to manipulate objects, which greatly increases user convenience.

In particular, among existing products, there has never been a teach pendant developed that can be used simultaneously with a mobile robot and a manipulator.

This award is all the more meaningful as it is the first case of developing a teach pendant for a mobile manipulator in Korea.

The teach pendant developed by the research team was developed to enable map and path generation, driving programs, simulations, and manipulator task programs for autonomous driving of mobile robots.

It is expected that effective simplification of the complex process of implementing future automation will be possible.

Because it provides a specialized user-friendly interface and a BT (Behavior Tree)-based program, even people who are not familiar with programming can easily program robot tasks.

ETRI conducted a user study targeting general users at the Usability Evaluation Research Center of Keimyung University on the pick and place task, in which a robot moves and places an object in a specific location, and the excellence of the Teach Pendant was recognized.

It has been verified for usability, meaning that even non-experts can easily handle it without coding.>
According to a report by IDTechEx, a global market research firm, the mobile robot market is expected to grow at an average annual rate of 18.9% over the next 20 years, reaching a size of $1,500 billion (190 trillion won) in 2044.

The developed teach pendant is expected to be applicable to various fields in the future, including small and medium-sized manufacturers, food and beverage, logistics, warehouses, markets, and museum services.

Experts with expertise in vision, collaborative robots, and mobile robots are rare in the automation industry, and the researchers expect that the developed teach pendant will lower the entry barriers for all three robotic elements at once, thereby securing many users.

Dr. Dong-Ji Yeon of ETRI’s Robot and Mobility Lab said, “Robots are currently expanding into various fields, and I hope that this user-friendly teach pendant will serve as a foundation for ordinary people, not just robotics experts, to easily use robots.”

Professor Seung-heon Yoo of Korea University's Department of Design also said, "Robots are representative technology-intensive products, but they must also reflect user-centered UX design values. This is the result of ETRI and Neuromeca actively agreeing with the approach and working together to achieve this. He added that convergent UX design research is important."

ETRI has decided to transfer this technology to collaborative robot and mobile robot-based companies and begin full-scale commercialization.

In addition, we plan to focus on improving the maps drawn by mobile robots in the app for the convenience of users in the future.

The iF Design Award is the world's most prestigious design competition hosted by the International Forum in Germany, and is considered one of the world's top three design awards along with Germany's 'Red Dot Design Award' and the United States' 'IDEA'. Winners will be selected in nine categories: packaging, communication, concept, interior, architecture, service design, user experience (UX), and user interface (UI).