SABRINA VERDUZCO WRITES – The South Korean government has announced an investment of about $14.8 million in robot development. This recent endeavor was instigated by the recent spike in technological innovation that took place in China. This project seeks to demonstrate South Korea’s ability to compete with China’s cheap labor that has become more prevalent since its robot implementation within the economic sector.
The government seeks to develop factory robots for use within the country’s manufacturing sector. The investmen program is expected to provide prospective opportunities for cheaper labor in the future. These technological advances seek to replace human workers in high-skilled jobs pertaining to consumer electronics, such as mobile phones.
The economic shift towards robotics strives to place South Korea at the forefront of innovation and economic success. The South Korean ministry believes that if Samsung, the happy recipient of the government expenditure, successfully creates these highly-efficient robots, then Korea’s dependence on China’s imports will significantly decrease.
The country is on the path towards self-sufficiency as it becomes less dependent on imports – in accordance with Samsung’s advisory and guiding role. Specific goals pertaining to robotic implementation anticipate that “emphasis will be placed on developing precision speed reducers, motors, controllers, and sensor encoders that are currently expensive and imported from abroad,” says the country’s Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy.
This large investment ($14.8m) seeks to elicit immense economic growth that can potentially generate an average annual growth rate of 18% within the next three years. In the greater scheme of things, this is not only a South Korean endeavor, but also a global one that clearly displays the manner in which many businesses around the world are deciding to make the transition from human workers to automated robots.
South Korea’s experience with this technological advancement involving robotic experimentation within the manufacturing sector will almost certainly serve as a precedent for other countries to follow.