It is self-evident that the robotics market will come. In that respect, Korea must forge its groundwork three to four years prior so that our country can preoccupy the robot market preemptively ahead of competing countries. Under such a firm belief, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy (MOCIE) is concentrating ambitiously its efforts to nurture the robot industry intensively as the leading part of The Second Semiconductor Myth Creation, according to director Sim Hag-bong, Robot Industries Division, Future Growth Industries Office, MOCIE.
On the occasion of Robot World 2007 which will be held from October 18~21, 2007, Sim emphasized: "The Ministry is doing its best for mobilizing policy means to nurture robot industry systematically such as robot fund, robot land and robot ethics charter." He added that the robot special law aims to pass the National Assembly by the end of October this year so that double investment may be avoided and the government can drive forward robot project priority fields in a pan-national level systematically.
Although the robot industry is wriggling by freeing itself from the quickening period, Korea's robot industry doesn't show any special killer application except for cleaning robots right now, Sim pointed out. In particular, he said: "If we don't prepare robot policy and system preemptively to catch up with the robot market which is expected to grow with a rapid speed in the years to come, Korea will not be able to correspond with the US or Japan's technology power and funds."
Nevertheless, he named our propensity to consume as our cutting-edge though Korea's robot industry lags behind robot advanced countries in terms of technology power or finance power.
In a word, robotics is the last industry Korea can lead, he explains. In conjunction with this, he paraphrased Bill Gates' comment: "The next generation after PCs is the age of the Robot Revolution and the robot industry also in the coming years will show its rapid growth pattern as robots currently are similar to the initial PC circumstance in the 1970s."
All industry strategies for Korea to date are a catch-up strategy, but robotics is the sole field in which Korea can do well since preemptive market creation will decide a leading country, Sim said. He explained that robotics is the sole new industry field which is possible for a simple item to create a several hundred dollar economic scale.
In the 2007 Intelligence-model Robot Grand Workshop, held at Oak Valley, Wonju, Kangwon Province on three days from August 29th, participants were of the same opinion that a legislative solution is necessary to create a new market and to spearhead the world market, sloughing technology subordination, according to Sim.
Besides, participants were of the same opinion about the necessity of encouraging robot industry manpower and the necessity of laying the material technology groundwork in the light of the fact that robotics parts localization rate is no more than 20% right now for Korea.
