The Korean government will develop collaborative robots and service robots into future industries

(Source: Korea "Electronic News")

The South Korean government will nurture collaborative robots for smart factories and service robots for medical and disaster relief applications into future growth industries. Cooperative robot safety regulations, etc. will be completely changed to industrial affinity. By 2022, the national productivity of robot core components will increase to 60%, and robot production will increase to 670 billion won.

The Ministry of Industry, Trade and Industry of South Korea recently announced the above plan at the "Symposium on Strategic Development of Intelligent Robot Industry" held at Korea Robotics Promotion Institute in Daegu, South Korea.

South Korea has a world-leading robot market, but it has always had a weak competitiveness in the robot industry. At the day's conference, the solution was discussed on the issues of slow market development due to various regulations, high dependence on the import of core components, and zero refinement in the industry.

The Korean Ministry of Industry decided to cultivate a collaborative robot industry that has received much attention recently. Cooperative robot is a new concept industrial robot, referring to the collaborative operation of humans and robots. Foreign leading companies have mastered the industrial robot market and South Korea can seize the nipping market.

The Korea Ministry of Industry will develop "Cooperative Robot Safety Guidelines" to improve collaborative robot safety regulations. South Korea's industry has asked for improvement of regulations since many years ago.

It will invest 50 collaborative robots in small and medium-sized manufacturing demonstrations. The focus will be on popularizing the areas where the efficiency of processes has been tested. It will combine the smart factory of the Ministry of Industry of Korea to build a project to popularize collaborative robots. The industry believes that collaborative robots will become new solutions for small and medium-sized enterprises that are facing such problems as the minimum wage and labor shortage.

For service robots will be designated strategic areas, and vigorously promote the commercialization of robots. The Korean Ministry of Industry has selected smart homes, medical rehabilitation, disaster relief and safety, unmanned transport, and agricultural robots as the top five areas of interest. The Korean government will work with robotics companies to help major demanders develop together. Targeting the main demanders, exemplary introduction of service robots, providing testbeds, and providing support for ensuring delivery volume.

The weak competitiveness of core components has been blamed on the chronic diseases in the industry. The Korean government will vigorously increase the competitiveness of core components. In order to ensure the competitiveness of robot parts such as driving, sensing, and control, medium and long-term parts development strategies will be formulated. Last year, the support for R&D of the robot's core components was 10.5%, which will increase to 20% in 2019. The national production rate of core components will increase from 41.1% in 2016 to 60% in 2022.

Based on the above strategy, the Korean Ministry of Industry will increase the number of companies with sales of over 50 billion won to 25 among small and medium-sized robots and backbone companies. The productivity of the robotics industry increased from 4,500 billion won in 2016 to 670 billion won in 2022. The number of employees in the robotics industry increased from 29,000 in 2016 to 36,000 in 2022. (This article comes from South Korea's cooperation media Korea "Electronic News")

[Editor: Shi Tianna]