Isu Jeong, a student in Professor Seulki Lee’s Embedded AI Lab in our school, received the Best Student Paper Award at the 3rd IAA Conference on AI for Space (IAA SpaceAI 2026), held in Jeju from August 26 to 28, 2026.
Organized by the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA), IAA SpaceAI is an international conference where researchers share the latest developments in the application of artificial intelligence to space systems and intelligent space systems. The conference covers key topics including space-system autonomy, onboard artificial intelligence, energy-efficient intelligent computing, AI hardware, and system integration.
The Best Student Paper Award is presented to a student author of an outstanding paper recognized for its originality, technical excellence, and potential impact in the field of artificial intelligence for space applications.
In this study, Jeong proposed “LunarDet,” a lightweight lunar crater detection model designed to operate efficiently under limited computational and energy resources. By applying knowledge distillation, the proposed method reduced computational requirements, inference latency, and energy consumption while maintaining high crater-detection performance. The study demonstrates the potential of onboard AI for resource-constrained space exploration systems, such as lunar exploration rovers.
The research was presented under the title “Intelligent Onboard Crater Detection for Lunar Exploration Systems Using Knowledge Distillation.” In recognition of its excellence and its demonstration of efficient AI operation in constrained computing environments, the study received the Best Student Paper Award.
