About 👋

I am Hyesung Lee, a Ph.D. student at KAIST (Kim Jaechul Graduate School of AI) and KIST, co-advised by Dr. Sungwook Yang and Prof. Kimin Lee. My research focuses on Force-Aware Dexterous Hand Manipulation to achieve human-level dexterity in robotic hands.

🧪Research Interests

• ✋Human level Dexterous Hand Manipulation
• 👁️Dynamics Aware Visuo-Force Representation Learning
• 🧱Vision-Haptic-Language-Action (VHLA) Models

📚Publications

DexSynRefine: Synthesizing and Refining Human-Object Interaction Motion for Physically Feasible Dexterous Robot Actions

Hyesung Lee^*, Hyunwoo Jung, Si-Hwan Heo, Sungwook Yang^†

Under Review (arXiv preprint), 2026

Paper Project

UniDex-ViTac: Learning Unified Visuo-Tactile Dexterous Manipulation Policy from Human Video Data

Hyesung Lee^*, Si-Hwan Heo, Sungwook Yang^†

ICRA 2026 Beyond Teleoperation Workshop

🏅Best Paper Award ($500 Prize)

Paper Project

Real-Time SLAM-Guided Closed-Loop Photodynamic Therapy with Pixel-Accurate Light-Dose Control

Hyesung Lee^*, Sungwook Yang^†

IEEE RA-L / ICRA, 2026

Paper

DexRefine: Refine Human Motion to Physically Feasible Robotic Actions

Hyesung Lee^*, Si-Hwan Heo, Sungwook Yang^†

IEEE Humanoids Workshop, 2025

Paper

Real-time Endomicroscopic Image Mosaicking with an EKF-based Sensor Fusion Approach

Jin Kim, Hyesung Lee^*, Sang-Rok Oh, Sungwook Yang^†

IEEE EMBC, 2023

Paper

🎓Education

KAIST & KIST
Ph.D. in Kim Jaechul Graduate School of AI, March 2026 - Present
Advisor: Sungwook Yang (KIST), Kimin Lee (KAIST)

Korea University & KIST
M.S. in Computer Science, February 2024 - February 2026
Advisor: Sungwook Yang (KIST), Jinkyu Kim (Korea University)
Thesis: Learning to Refine Human Motion into Physically Feasible Robotic Actions for Dexterous Manipulation

Kwangwoon University
B.S. in School of Robotics, March 2017 - August 2023
Advisor: Jin-Oh Kim

💼Experience

KIST (Korea Institute of Science and Technology), Seoul, Republic of Korea
Intern, March 2023 - August 2024

• Researched Endomicroscopic Image SLAM and Sensor Fusion.
• Performed Photo-Theranosis System Integration.

Kakao Mobility, Seoul, Republic of Korea
Contract Worker, December 2021 - May 2022

• Built a Promotional Autonomous Driving Mobile Robot for Kakao NEMO 2022.
• Conducted Stereo Camera Visual Odometry Research.

Stryx (Startup), Seoul, Republic of Korea
Intern, September 2021 - December 2021

• Developed Road-Data Acquisition Software using 3D LiDAR, GNSS, and Machine Vision Cameras.
• Built a Sensor Calibration Visualization Tool using ROS RViz.

🏆Awards

• 2023.04 - Paper Excellence Award, KSME Bio Engineering Division Poster Presentation
• 2019.10 - 1st Place, National Defense Robot Contest (Hanwha Defense)
• 2019.08 - 2nd Place, Busan Robot Contest Turtlebot3 Autorace (Busan Bexco)
• 2018.11 - 3rd Place, 2018 R-BIZ Challenge Turtlebot3 Autorace (Daegu EXCO)
• 2018.10 - 5th Place, IRC 2018 Sumo Robot Competition (Ilsan KINTEX)
• 2017.11 - Grand Prize, Introduction to Engineering Design Exhibition (Kwangwoon University)