Ministry to focus on commercializing robots

The nation’s focus of policy for the robot industry will shift to commercialization from research and development, the Ministry of Knowledge Economy said Wednesday.

The new policy direction was unveiled in the ministry’s second-round roadmap for the robot industry, titled “Future Strategy for Robot (2012-2022).”

“One of the key points in the future robot policy is to support various sectors, public or private, to adopt and use robots in their daily work,’’ Kang Kam-chan, a ministry official, said.

The ministry has supported robot-related R&D projects since 2005 when it designated intelligence robotics as one of the nation’s new growth engines. Under the new policy direction, the ministry’s R&D investment will also seek projects to commercialize robots.

Four R&D projects that the ministry promised to allocate 350 billion won for are the development of a robot to deal with natural disasters, a robot-driven health down development, a human-robot collaborative plant and a human-friendly robot to support housework.

“In the second stage, the private sector will lead the robot industry,” Kang added.

When those projects take shape, the ministry will encourage market participants to converge their robot businesses into the service and content industry.

Based on the new roadmap, the ministry predicted that the nation’s robot market will be able to expand up to 25 trillion won by 2022 from 2 trillion won in 2011.

By Seo Jee-yeon  (jyseo@heraldcorp.com)