By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter

By the 2010s, Korea is expecting to see robots assisting police and the military, patrolling the neighborhoods and going on recon missions on the battlefield.
The Center for Intelligent Robots on Monday said the state-backed agency plans to check the feasibility of security robots by convening a 40-member planning committee late this week.

``If the robots prove to be viable technically and commercially, we will be able to begin developing them late next year,’’ said Lee Ho-gil, head of the center.

When completed, the outdoor security robots will be able to make their night watch rounds and even chase criminals, according to Lee.

The government also seeks to build combat robots. They will take the shape of a dog or a horse, with six or eight legs or wheels.

Toward that end, the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) and the Defense Ministry will combine to channel a total of 33.4 billion won ($33.9 million) through 2011.

``The robots will be directed by a remote control system or move autonomously via their own artificial intelligence systems,’’ MIC project manager Oh Sang-rok said.

``The two sophisticated robots will be empowered by the country’s state-of-the-art mobile network, thus enabling mass production at an affordable price,’’ Oh noted.

Smart robots need three basic functions of sensing, processing and action. Thus far, robotics researchers have tried to cram the three into a single dummy, causing expenses to soar.

Instead, the planned robots will be receiving most sensing and processing capabilities via a Web connection. Only the ability of movement will be located in the robot.

``In a nutshell, the mobile robot offers a hardware platform for the smart functions provided by the country’s advanced network connected to the super computers,’’ Oh said.

Korea boasts the world’s highest penetration of high-speed Internet with roughly 12 million out of total 15.5 million households hooked up to the always-on connection.

On top of their use in national defense and social security, the MIC hopes to use the network robots for the private sector late this year.

``Three kinds of households machines will commercially debut this October. They will sell for 1-2 million won, a price that will not scare off customers. The low price is possible since they are empowered by outside networks instead of incorporated software,’’ Oh said.

The three sorts of wheeled robots will be used for various applications: cleaning rooms, health-care programs, Internet connection, home monitoring or reading books to kids.

The mechanical servants, some of which have the ability to re-charge automatically, can also order Chinese food and pizza by connecting to the local network.

The MIC already finished a test run of the household robots late last year by installing them in 64 households and two post offices in Seoul and its vicinity.

Hyung Tae-gun, director general at the MIC, expected the robots will sell up to 3,000 units for this year alone and the sales will surge in the near future.

``Recently Japan unveiled household service robots priced at up to 10 million won, almost 10 times as expensive as ours. So you can guess the competitiveness of our network robots,’’ Hyung said.

voc200@koreatimes.co.kr