Nikkei Asia Prizes 2005

Home-grown robots elevate industry to new heights

Ko Myoung-sam, a researcher in control and instrumentation engineering, has helped propel South Korea to the front ranks of world industry through his pioneering role in factory automation.

Hamheung, now in North Korea, was a major industrial city when Ko was born there in 1930. He grew up in an environment full of factories and was familiar with the sight of people devoting themselves to making things. Studying engineering at Seoul National University was thus natural for him.

Robots are now on most production lines in South Korea, but until the mid-1980s the country had to rely on imported robots, mainly from Japan. At the time, instruction manuals attached to imported robots showed how to handle the machines but had no word about control software. South Korean firms had no choice but to use imports, and the exact workings of the software were kept unknown as a "black box" for them.

Making history

In 1983, Ko was invited by the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials to jointly develop an industrial robot. He accepted the offer and eagerly took on the project in the belief that factory automation and robot technology would crucially affect the competitiveness of companies in five to 10 years.

He was especially keen to develop control software. After much trial and error, researchers on his team completed a set of robotics mechanisms and software in 1985.

Impressed by the team's sophisticated robot system, Samsung Electronics Co. soon launched a joint project with Seoul National University for commercialization. It took the partners two years to complete a so-called horizontal articulated robot. Samsung soon introduced made-in-South Korea robots to its production lines.

Ko has made contributions to upgrading South Korean industry not only as a researcher but also as an educator. The Inter-University Semiconductor Research Center, which he created in 1985, is the capstone of that achievement.

The center has evolved into a world-class R&D base, sending talented engineers to many South Korean electronics firms and laying the foundation for their current formidable competitiveness.