{"682890":{"#nid":"682890","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Tech Researchers Tabbed to Build AI Systems for Medical Robots in South Korea","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EOverwhelmed doctors and nurses struggling to provide adequate patient care in South Korea are getting support from Georgia Tech and Korean-based researchers through an AI-powered robotic medical assistant.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ETop South Korean research institutes have enlisted Georgia Tech researchers \u003Cstrong\u003ESehoon\u003C\/strong\u003E \u003Cstrong\u003EHa\u003C\/strong\u003E and \u003Cstrong\u003EJennifer G.\u003C\/strong\u003E \u003Cstrong\u003EKim\u003C\/strong\u003E to develop artificial intelligence (AI) to help the humanoid assistant navigate hospitals and interact with doctors, nurses, and patients.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHa and Kim will partner with Neuromeka, a South Korean robotics company, on a five-year, 10 billion won (about $7.2 million US) grant from the South Korean government. Georgia Tech will receive about $1.8 million of the grant.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHa and Kim, assistant professors in the School of Interactive Computing, will lead Tech\u2019s efforts and also work with researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ENeuromeka has built industrial robots since its founding in 2013 and recently decided to expand into humanoid service robots.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ELee, the group leader of the humanoid medical assistant project, said he fielded partnership requests from many academic researchers. Ha and Kim stood out as an ideal match because of their robotics, AI, and human-computer interaction expertise.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EFor Ha, the project is an opportunity to test navigation and control algorithms he\u2019s developed through research that earned him the National Science Foundation CAREER Award. Ha combines computer simulation and real-world training data to make robots more deployable in high-stress, chaotic environments.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cDr. Ha has everything we want to put into our system, including his navigation policies,\u201d Lee said. \u201cHe works with robots and AI, and there weren\u2019t many candidates in that space. We needed a collaborator who can create the software and has experience running it on robots.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHa said he is already considering how his algorithms could scale beyond hospitals and become a universal means of robot navigation in unstructured real-world environments.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cFor now, we\u2019re focusing on a customized navigation model for Korean environments, but there are ways to transfer the data set to different environments, such as the U.S. or European healthcare systems,\u201d Ha said.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThe final product can be deployed to other systems and industries. It can help industrial workers at factories, retail stores, any place where workers can get overwhelmed by a high volume of tasks.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EKim will focus on making the robot\u2019s design and interaction features more human. She\u2019ll develop a large-language model (LLM) AI system to communicate with patients, nurses, and doctors. She\u2019ll also develop an app that will allow users to input their commands and queries.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThis project is not just about controlling robots, which is why Dr. Kim\u2019s expertise in human-computer interaction design through natural language was essential.,\u201d Lee said.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EKim is interviewing stakeholders from three South Korean hospitals to identify service and care pain points. The issues she\u2019s identified so far relate to doctor-patient communication, a lack of emotional support for patients, and an excessive number of small tasks that consume nurses\u2019 time.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cOur goal is to develop this robot in a very human-centered way,\u201d she said. \u201cOne way is to give patients a way to communicate about the quality of their care and how the robot can support their emotional well-being.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe found that patients often hesitate to ask busy nurses for small things like getting a cup of water. We believe this is an area a robot can support.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe robot\u2019s hardware will be built in Korea, while Ha and Kim will develop the software in the U.S.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EJong-hoon Park, CEO of Neuromeka, said in a press release the goal is to have a commercialized product as soon as possible.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThrough this project, we will solve problems that existing collaborative robots could not,\u201d Park said. \u201cWe expect the medical AI humanoid robot technology being developed will contribute to reducing the daily work burden of medical and healthcare workers in the field.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":"","format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EGeorgia Tech researchers Sehoon Ha and Jennifer Kim are working with South Korean institutions to create an AI-powered medical assistant robot. This five-year project, funded by a $7.2 million grant from the South Korean government, aims to alleviate the workload of healthcare professionals in South Korea by enabling the robot to navigate hospitals and interact with staff and patients.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Georgia Tech researchers are collaborating with South Korean research institutes on a five-year grant to develop an AI-powered humanoid medical assistant to help doctors and nurses in South Korea."}],"uid":"36530","created_gmt":"2025-06-25 19:49:57","changed_gmt":"2025-06-25 19:55:15","author":"Nathan Deen","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","location":"Atlanta, GA","dateline":{"date":"2025-06-25T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2025-06-25T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"677282":{"id":"677282","type":"image","title":"IMG_4499-copy.jpg","body":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003ESchool of Interactive Computing Assistant Professor Sehoon Ha, Neuromeka researchers Joonho Lee and Yunho Kim, School of IC Assistant Professor Jennifer Kim, and Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute researcher Dongyeop Kang, are collaborating to develop a medical assistant robot to support doctors and nurses in Korea. Photo by Nathan Deen\/College of Computing.\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","created":"1750881009","gmt_created":"2025-06-25 19:50:09","changed":"1750881009","gmt_changed":"2025-06-25 19:50:09","alt":"Researchers","file":{"fid":"261166","name":"IMG_4499-copy.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/2025\/06\/25\/IMG_4499-copy.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/2025\/06\/25\/IMG_4499-copy.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":126414,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/2025\/06\/25\/IMG_4499-copy.jpg?itok=v92OOgVu"}}},"media_ids":["677282"],"groups":[{"id":"47223","name":"College of Computing"},{"id":"1188","name":"Research Horizons"},{"id":"50876","name":"School of Interactive Computing"}],"categories":[{"id":"194606","name":"Artificial Intelligence"},{"id":"153","name":"Computer Science\/Information Technology and Security"},{"id":"152","name":"Robotics"}],"keywords":[{"id":"192863","name":"go-ai"},{"id":"187812","name":"artificial intelligence (AI)"},{"id":"9153","name":"Research Horizons"},{"id":"187915","name":"go-researchnews"},{"id":"78681","name":"medical robotics"},{"id":"194391","name":"AI in Healthcare"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"193655","name":"Artificial Intelligence at Georgia Tech"},{"id":"39501","name":"People and Technology"},{"id":"39521","name":"Robotics"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}