A team of physicists and mathematicians at the Institute for Basic Science's Center for Soft and Living Matter, in South Korea, working with a colleague from the University of Geneva, has developed an algorithm that can be used to find the shape of an object to cause it to roll down a ramp following a desired path.
I’m not sure what - if any - practical application it has, but it’s extremely impressive nevertheless.
It might have none, or it might turn out to have some unexpected application way down the line.
The fun part about basic mathematics research is that sometimes it suddenly just perfectly solves some other problem hundreds of years later.
Like that time in the 1800s a guy figured out a solution to a 350 year old problem, and then in the 90s we realized that it was a description of particle physics and all the math had just been sitting there waiting.