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POSCO Group drives Industrial Robot business

2022.05.19

POSCO Group plans to apply more robots to the group's core business areas such as steel mills, new materials, and logistics.

POSCO ICT is creating synergy by forming POSCO Robot Solution Research Center consist of POSCO Holdings Industry-Academic Cooperation Center, RIST Convergence Innovation Research Institute, POSTECH and POSCO Group Robot Technology Council. POSCO Group is currently pushing to improve productivity and quality by expanding the application of robots to high-risk and high-intensity workplaces in order to upgrade smart factories to safer workplaces.

The Robot Technology Council plans to play a leading role by discovering sites that need to apply robots at POSCO Group's plant and promoting joint R&D and pilot projects to secure optimal technologies and solutions suitable for field needs.

POSCO ICT plans to develop robot technologies and solutions, take charge of overall robot automation such as design, build, and operation for field application, while establishing a convergence system that connects robots with the currently operating smart factory.

POSCO Robot Solution Research Center is in charge of introducing and developing solutions for rapid field application by discovering and defining robot needs at steel mill sites. POSCO Holdings will also participate in the council to connect venture companies that are being fostered through POSCO's venture platform as cooperative partners for core technologies, while RIST Convergence Innovation Research Institute and POSTECH will be in charge of developing element technologies.

To this end, POSCO Group Robot Technology Conference was held at POSCO ICT Pangyo Smart Tower on the 19th of May. The conference was attended by industry-academic officials, including POSCO Group, ABB, Korea Robot Industry Association, and Pukyong National University, to share the latest development status and industry trends of robot technology, and to hold panel discussions and technology/case presentations for safety-oriented robot services for steel mills. Professor Kim Sang-bae, head of MIT's biomimetic robot research institute, shared the latest robot technology trends and new design paradigms of dynamic robots under the theme of "Robots with Physical Intelligence."

In the future, the Robot Technology Council plans to regularize technology exchanges to secure core technologies and solutions. In addition, it plans to jointly develop core element technologies focusing on technologies with high ripple effect from a mid- to long-term perspective, promote them in advance for steel mills, and expand them within the group and seek commercialization.

Meanwhile, the robot industry is divided into industrial robots used to replace dangerous work at production sites such as factories or to improve productivity, and service robots such as medical care, dining out, lodging, and households. In the case of service-type robots, many large domestic companies such as Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, and SKT are participating, but global robot manufacturers such as Fanuc, KUKA, and Yaskawa are leading the market for industrial robots.
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