Jung-Hwan Youn

Area of Study / Keywords

Robotics Haptics Robot Hands Dexterous Teleoperation Soft Robotics

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About

Jung-Hwan Youn joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Alberta in 2026, where he leads the Human Augmentation and Novel Device Laboratory (HAND LAB). He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in 2023. From 2023 to 2024, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), one of Korea’s largest government-funded research institutes. From 2024 to 2026, he conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He is an Associate Editor for the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) in the Human-Centered Robotics and Automation area. 

His research focuses on wearable haptic devices, soft robotic systems, and dexterous human–robot interaction. His work explores novel sensing and actuation technologies for bidirectional haptic teleoperation, robotic manipulation, and human augmentation.

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Research

Our lab focuses on bridging the gap between human and robotic dexterity. Our core research direction is to understand the principles underlying human manipulation and to develop novel hardware and systems for tactile-intelligent teleoperation, enabling more natural, dexterous, and bidirectional interaction between humans and robots.

Wearable Tactile Feedback Device
We design compact, skin-worn actuators that reproduce tactile sensations  directly at the fingertips. Our devices are lightweight enough for continuous wear and precise enough to convey fine surface textures, contact forces, and slip events during robotic teleoperation and virtual reality interaction.

Wearable Tactile Sensing System
Understanding contact is fundamental to dexterous manipulation. We develop flexible, conformable sensor arrays that wrap around the hand and fingertips to capture multimodal contact information with high spatial and temporal resolution. These sensing systems are designed not only to provide rich data for teaching robots to manipulate objects more like humans, but also to uncover the fundamental principles that govern human dexterous manipulation.

Robot Hands
The human hand is one of the most versatile tools in nature. We engineer multi-fingered robotic end-effectors that combine rigid linkages and soft compliant actuation elements to achieve a broad manipulation repertoire. Our hands are designed for both standalone autonomous operation and seamless integration into teleoperation systems.

Dexterous Teleoperation System
We build end-to-end systems that couple a human operator's hand motion to a dexterous robot hand through a bidirectional haptic feedback loop. The operator feels what the robot touches; the robot mirrors the operator's intent. Our research addresses stability under communication delay, and intuitive mapping between human and robot kinematics.

Jung-Hwan Youn, Yanjun Chen, Ali Israr, Craig Shultz

IEEE Transactions on Haptics. 2026 April; 10.1109/TOH.2026.3681229

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Jung-Hwan Youn, Seung Heon Lee, Craig Shultz

ACM TEI. 2026 March; 10.1145/3731459.3773337

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Jung-Hwan Youn, Ki-Uk Kyung

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters. 2026 February; 10.1109/LRA.2026.3662636

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Jung-Hwan Youn, Seung Heon Lee, Craig Shultz

ACM CHI. 2025 April; 10.1145/3706598.3713175

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Jung-Hwan Youn, Seung-Yeon Jang, Inwook Hwang, Qibing Pei, Sungryul Yun, Ki-Uk Kyung

Science Advances. 2025 March; 10.1126/sciadv.adt4839

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Seung-Yeon Jang, Minjae Cho, Hyunwoo Kim, Meejeong Choi, Seongcheol Mun, Jung-Hwan Youn, Jihwan Park, Geonwoo Hwang, Inwook Hwang, Sungryul Yun, Ki-Uk Kyung

Science Advances. 2024 September; 10.1126/sciadv.adq2024

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Jung-Hwan Youn, Je-Sung Koh, Ki-Uk Kyung

Soft Robotics. 2024 August; 10.1089/soro.2023.0027

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Inwook Hwang, Seongcheol Mun, Jung-Hwan Youn, Hyeong Jun Kim, Seung Koo Park, Meejeong Choi, Tae June Kang, Qibing Pei, Sungryul Yun

Nature Communications. 2024 March; 10.1038/s41467-024-46709-7

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Jung-Hwan Youn, Je-sung Koh, Ki-Uk Kyung

2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). 2023 May; 10.1109/icra48891.2023.10160797

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View additional publications

• HAND Lab