DAEJEON — A medical humanoid robot developed by researchers at the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) has won the International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) in the United States, one of the world's three most prestigious design prizes.
ETRI said on the 29th that NAMI.I, the user interface for its medical assistance humanoid robot NAMI, received a main award at the IDEA Design Awards.
In 2024, ETRI won both Germany's iF Design Award and the IDEA Design Award for the teach pendant software of MOBY, an autonomous mobile collaborative robot. With NAMI.I, the institute has again demonstrated its capabilities in user-centered robot interfaces, winning global recognition for its design competitiveness.
NAMI.I is a user interface that lets medical staff assign tasks to the NAMI humanoid robot without learning complex robot programming or specialized operating methods.
Through NAMI.I, users can intuitively request the tasks the robot should perform and easily check the robot's current status and the progress of its work. The interface is expected to lower the barrier to robot use for medical staff and improve the chances that humanoid robots will be deployed at actual medical sites rather than remaining in laboratories and test spaces.
The researchers expect NAMI to eventually assist with a range of tasks that medical staff perform repeatedly at hospitals, including transporting supplies and medicines, organizing medical items, guiding patients and supporting patients in daily activities.
ETRI plans to apply NAMI.I to the NAMI robot and conduct a demonstration with medical staff at Keimyung University Dongsan Hospital. Medical staff will use NAMI directly at the hospital, and the researchers will conduct a comprehensive analysis of its convenience, areas for improvement and the needs raised by staff during use.
Based on the results of the demonstration, the researchers plan to continue improving the usability and stability of NAMI.I to lay the groundwork for commercializing medical assistance humanoid robots.
"NAMI.I is a user-centered interface developed so that a complex robot can be used intuitively from the perspective of medical staff," said Dong Ji-yeon, a researcher at the Intelligent Robotics Research Section of ETRI's Daegu-Gyeongbuk Research Division. "Through the demonstration at Keimyung University Dongsan Hospital, we will advance it into a technology that genuinely helps at actual medical sites."
