KOREATECH Gazette Team wins Grand Prize for intelligent CPR robot

The ‘Gazette Team’ from the Mechatronics Engineering department at Korea University of Technology and Education (KOREATECH) has won the Grand Prize at the 2026 Engineering Industry Competition. The award, which includes the Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Prize, was presented in the university/graduate design idea category.

The team’s winning project is an ‘intelligent cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) robot’ designed to overcome the limitations of manual CPR, such as varying compression quality due to a rescuer's fatigue or skill level. The robot uses a motor and ball screw mechanism to perform chest compressions at a consistent depth and speed. It utilizes load cell sensors to detect patient physical conditions and provide real-time feedback to minimize the risk of chest injury.

Additionally, the device incorporates non-contact AI technology via a camera to monitor the patient's recovery status. This includes deep learning techniques like remote photoplethysmography (rPPG) to estimate heart rate through skin color changes and the Eye Aspect Ratio (EAR) algorithm to track eye movement. The team validated the robot's effectiveness using a custom-designed Mock Circulatory Loop (MCL) to simulate human blood circulation.