KIST joins EUR 10M Horizon Europe robot project as only non-European partner

The Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) said on Oct 27 that a team led by principal researcher Song Ga-hye and senior researcher Ryu Kang-hyun of its Center for Intelligent and Interactive Robotics has joined a large advanced-robotics project under the EU's Horizon Europe research programme, according to Yonhap News and AI Times. The consortium of 15 universities, institutes and companies from nine countries (Finland, Korea, the Netherlands, Italy, the UK, Estonia, Denmark, Germany and Portugal) is coordinated by Tampere University, runs for three and a half years from September 2026 and has a total budget above EUR 10 million.

KIST is the only member from outside Europe and receives EUR 850,000, about KRW 1.26 billion, directly from the EU on the strength of Korea's associate membership of Horizon Europe. Its part is the robot's hands and eyes: soft grippers built from flexible materials and structures, combined with vision AI that reads an object's shape and condition so the gripper can choose a matching shape and actuation. The team plans to validate the system in real work settings and later in harder environments such as underwater and high-voltage sites, with smart farms, manufacturing and care robots named as uses. The outlets did not give the project's name.

MEKAWIRE context: soft and tactile grippers for irregular, fragile objects are the gap we described in our robot touch explainer. KIST's EUR 850,000 share is small next to Korean ministry robot programmes, but direct EU funding as a full consortium member is still rare for a Korean robotics lab.