Lauren Lee | February 27, 2025 - Atlanta, GA

Now in its fourth year, the Stretch Robot Pitch Competition continues to evolve into one of Georgia Tech’s most imaginative and human‑centered design challenges. Hosted by the TechSAge Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (part of which is located in CIDI), the competition brings together students from across the Institute to create innovative applications for Stretch –  a lightweight, open source mobile manipulator robot with reaching, sensing, and grasping capabilities. Stretch was developed by Hello Robot which was co‑founded by former Georgia Tech professor Charlie Kemp. 

With its compact form factor, capable arm, and relatively affordable price, Stretch has already become a favorite among researchers looking to push the boundaries of assistive robotics. The pitch competition invites Georgia Tech students to imagine not just what the robot can do, but what it should do to meaningfully improve daily life for people aging with disabilities.

This year, teams across several disciplines—from engineering, to business, to computing, and the sciences—submitted video pitches outlining how their technology concept tackles real-world problems users face. The winning team earned $1,000 and, more importantly, the chance to spend a semester working with Stretch in Georgia Tech’s Aware Home turning their pitch into a working prototype. Sponsors included TechSAge, AI-CARING, the Institute for People and Technology (IPaT), and Hello Robot.

First place was awarded to “Chef Stretch,” a concept aimed at helping older adults with disabilities determine whether food has spoiled so they can prepare and consume food safely. The five-student team included Caitlin Woodward and Elizabeth Thompson (College of Engineering), Aditi Ashok (Scheller College of Business), and Michelle Gu and Vedita Sawhney (College of Sciences).

This robotic assistant would utilize Stretch’s camera and manipulation capabilities in conjunction with odor detection sensors to detect signs of spoilage and assist users with managing food inventory. Identifying food spoilage could be especially challenging for individuals with impairments in mobility, vision, or cognition. 

As the winning team’s proposal notes, “Mobility, sensing, and transportation barriers should not stop individuals aging with disabilities from living healthy and nutritious lives.”  In addressing these challenges, the students hope to help users avoid foodborne illness, prevent waste, and maintain independence in a deeply personal area of life: the kitchen. 

Elena Remillard, one of the competition organizers and a CIDI researcher in technology and aging, was especially impressed with the team’s interdisciplinary approach to problem solving. She shared, “I am eager to see how these five students contribute their diverse disciplines and interests to the project this semester. Collectively, they are equipped to cover all the bases from chemical sensing, to the prototype engineering, to the business case.”

Brian Jones, Director of the Aware Home and competition director, underscored how the competition is intentionally structured to push students toward user-informed creativity. Through interviews and user research, he notes, students gain “a deeper appreciation of how they can design for a variety of abilities in the future.” 

This experiential learning, Jones argues, goes to the core of a Georgia Tech education: “The competition provides an opportunity for students to apply the design process—not just to make something work, but to consider the needs of everyone who might use their solution.” Jones also highlighted the benefit for participants with disabilities, who get the chance to share their experiences and directly shape early‑stage design thinking. 

While Chef Stretch took the top prize, the judges awarded an honorable mention to Ali Vafaeian (College of Computing) for “Bimanual Clothes Manipulation and Assisted Dressing” with a $500 cash prize. His proposal tackles another essential activity of daily living, dressing, which can be challenging task for many individuals with mobility impairments. 

The student’s design introduces a dual‑gripper end-effector that allows Stretch to grasp and manipulate garments, like a jacket, to support independent dressing. The project not only pushes the capabilities of the Stretch platform but also embodies a principle the competition prizes: thoughtful, human-centered engineering that respects the dignity and agency of the user.

By bringing together the interdisciplinary strengths of Georgia Tech, the Stretch Robot Pitch Competition reflects the Institute’s deep commitment to student innovation. Students are not simply solving technical problems, they are learning to design with users in mind. The collaboration among campus hubs like CIDI and Aware Home ensures that emerging innovators gain the skills and perspectives needed to design technologies that support people in their everyday lives.