April 15, 2025 – Elena Remillard
This past Fall, students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign got familiar with Stretch™ – an open-source, mobile assistive robot with reaching, grasping, and sensing capabilities. Twenty undergraduate and graduate students participated in third Stretch Robot Pitch Competition which sought innovative hardware or software solutions for using Stretch to support individuals aging with disabilities. Sponsored by TechSAge RERC and Hello Robot, the company who developed Stretch, the competition challenged students to design solutions that leveraged Stretch’s capabilities to support the daily living needs of individuals aging with disabilities.
Students submitted a brief proposal and pitch video that detailed their concept for Stretch and how it addressed an unmet need for this population. The competition emphasized human-centered design and encouraged students to engage older adults with disabilities to assess their user needs and gain feedback on the design concepts. New to this year’s competition, students had the opportunity to consult with Occupational Therapy doctoral students from Georgia State University for guidance on real-world applications.
Dr. Harshal Mahajan coordinated this year’s competition and helped steer the submissions by providing preliminary feedback and connecting student teams with experts to refine their pitch ideas. He shared, “After interacting with professionals from a different field of expertise, many students talked about being able to see their selected problem area from a different lens and having new insights on the feasibility of their proposed solutions.” The panel of judges for the competition included representatives from TechSAge and Hello Robot who are experts in robotics, gerontology, physical therapy, occupational therapy and universal design.
1st place was awarded to HYGI+ – an innovative cleaning module that integrates a vacuum, motorized brushes, and a waste disposal module with Stretch’s existing hardware and software to enable multi-surface cleaning that goes beyond existing robotic vacuums. The winning team, Shuoning (Stone) Shi & Yuheng (Leo) Wang, from the School of Art & Design, pictured above, received a cash prize of $1000 and the opportunity develop and test concept in collaboration with researchers in the McKechnie Family Life Home. Two honorable mentions ($500 prizes each) were awarded to student teams for concepts that utilized Stretch for hazard detection among users with vision impairment and detecting pressure ulcers.
Student teams utilized interdisciplinary problem solving with competitors representing eight departments from the College of Applied Health Sciences, Grainger College of Engineering, and the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois. Building off successful competitions in 2021 and 2022, the Stretch Robot Pitch competition continues to be a great outlet for students to demonstrate creativity in robotics. Eight interdisciplinary teams comprising of 20 undergraduate and graduate students participated in the competition and they represented 8 departments from the College of Applied Health Sciences, Grainger College of Engineering, and the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois.
View the 2024 winning submissions and their pitch videos.