Today, Kyum Lee, an enthusiastic undergraduate student from our Continuum Robotics Laboratory, showcased his work at the 2024 Undergraduate Engineering Research Day (UnERD). Held annually in Toronto, UnERD is a vibrant forum where undergraduate engineering students present their research across a spectrum of engineering disciplines. This year, the conference featured over 150 innovative projects.

Kyum presented his ESROP funded summer project Design of a Modular Tendon Driven Continuum Robot Platform and Tension Calibration for Teleoperation Research. Mentored by PhD students Jimmy Shentu and Chloe Pogue and supervised our PI, his project stood out for its ingenuity and technical excellence. His hard work paid off as he received the Best Podium Award in his category—Aerospace, Advanced Manufacturing, and Mechatronics — evaluated on novelty, research contribution, and the clarity of presentation. Congratulations to Kyum on this well-deserved recognition! We couldn’t be more proud!

Over the course of the summer, Kyum not only conceptualized but also designed and constructed several fully functional tendon driven continuum robots! He also innovated a novel method for tendon tensioning and successfully built a device to implement this technique. His contributions are significant, and we are currently preparing to submit a conference paper detailing this work. We are happy that Kyum will continue his journey with us as a research student this fall, and look forward to his continued innovation and development in our lab.

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