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Korea's intelligent robot
industry
SEOUL - With
South Korean robot manufacturers vying to unveil
new products in the second half of the year,
intelligent robots represent a soon-to-be booming
industry that could reach 30 trillion won (US$29.7
billion) by 2013 from the current 300 billion won.
Yujin Robotics is planning to release its
ICLEBO-Q later this year, a robot-cleaner one step
up from predecessor ICLEBO, South Korea's first
commercial robot. Meanwhile, LG Electronics Co is
back in business with its ROBOKING 2, another
cleaning robot priced around 1 million won. The
original went on sale two years ago for three
times that price before sluggish sales forced LG
to pull the plug.
At the high end of the
market, veteran player Hanool Robotics is
retailing its OTTORO model for 4 million won for
consumers who like their robot to self-charge and
navigate its way around the interior of their
house independently. "Cleaning robots suit the
emerging market since they are relatively familiar
to consumers as a household appliance," said an
industry source.
Entertainment robots are
still a way off, however, as manufacturers
consider how to integrate applications that make
educational software all part of the fun. "Many
entertainment robots may be built by applying
diverse cultural contents," said Cho Young-hoon,
director of the Korea Advanced Intelligent Robot
Association (KAIRA).
"Entertainment robots
could become massively popular as an education
tool when made to download contents from
children's education websites," said Cho Won-tae,
chief executive officer of IZI Robotics. IZI
Robotics plans to release a robo-puppy in May 2006
that can download content from the Internet.
Japan's Sony Corp introduced its puppy robot
brand, Aibo, in 1999. Both will encounter
competition from lower-priced DASATECH, which
plans to jump into the fray for cute, if
computer-like, canines next year.
But with
some prodding by the government and its policies
to buttress the new industry, the demand for
personal robots is expected to rise rapidly. The
Ministry of Information and Technology plans to
place test robots in apartments and post offices
that operate a broad convergence network (BcN) to
give the new field greater exposure to consumers.
"The opportunities for the public to experience
robots will become more frequent and natural,"
said an industry source.
Big conglomerates
are tending to bide their time before making any
commitments, waiting to see how LG fares before
diving into a market that has not yet proven its
lucrative potential. Samsung Electronics is
developing its own models but is believed to be
deferring its commercial entrance pending brighter
market prospects. Samsung unveiled 14 robots at an
exhibition in Seoul last March and is currently
developing a security model as part of the
Ubiquitous Robot Companion project organized by
the Information Ministry.
While companies
like Daewoo Electronics are hesitant, however,
saying they will decide in September on the
commercial release of a cleaning robot,
telecommunication giant KT gave an August date for
its household helper managed via the company's
wireless Internet service. Yet, despite combined
efforts to shove the country into the era of
state-of-the-art robotics, several hurdles remain,
including price setting and performance - the
latter seeming in many instances anti-climactic
given the consumers' inflated expectations from
Hollywood movies.
"People tend to think
that cleaning robots can take care of all of the
cleaning chores," said an industry source, adding
that this was not the case. Astronomic marketing
costs and tight budgets will also hinder
manufacturers, many of which are small and medium
businesses. Companies are now sweating over where
to set prices on a scale of affordable to what
many would call outrageous, or 300,000 won to 4
million won.
"The important issue now is
to maximize consumer satisfaction in correlation
to the price range," said the source. A lack of
technical standardization connecting high-end
products is also holding the industry back. While
common standards are essential to incorporate
different robots with varying electronic devices
into the same intelligent network, experts also
clamor that they are needed to wipe out cheap
models pumped out by countries like China that
fail to meet basic criteria.
Reports have
it that 10 cleaning robots are being sold on the
mainland, most of them copies of well-established
models that fall short of their South Korean
counterparts in terms of core function. Pundits
say this could destroy the reputation of an
industry that looks set to snowball. "If people
spread the word after using cheap foreign-made
robots that they aren't as good as expected, it
would deal a massive blow to the robot industry
which is just about to blossom," an industry
source said.
The South Korean robot
industry is in the process of establishing a
common technical standard. KAIRA plans to decide a
common scheme for network-based intelligent
robots, as well as a common technical standard for
robots for teenagers by the end of the year. "It
isn't easy to come up with a common scheme for
robots while new developments are pouring out
every second," said Chang Sung-jo, director of the
Korea Association of Robotics, adding that a
technical standard is likely to be ready by 2008.
(Asia Pulse/Yonhap) |
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