Name : Sang-Rok Oh, Ph.D.

Affiliation : 

Director, R-Learning Center,

Principal Research Scientist, Interaction & Robotics Research Center,

KIST(Korea Institute of Science and Technology)

Abstract :

Even though many products of service robot are available in the market such as vacuum cleaning robot, education robot and so on, size of the market is not growing as rapidly as we are expecting. When and how can we open the market of the service robots? There may be several reasons for that such as lack of technology, high cost and so on. Besides those factors, valuation and servitization issues will be discussed to answer the question. Robot-based learning(R-Learning) for the early childhood at kindergarten in Korea will be introduced as an example for the valuation and servitization. 

Short Bio:

Dr. Oh joined the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) in 1988 after graduation from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology(KAIST) for his Ph.D. degree, and has been working as a Principal Research Engineer at the Center for Cognitive Robotics Research, KIST. During 2000-2003, he was a Head of Intelligent System Control and Robotics Center, KIST. In 1999, he also became a Director of Bio-mimetic Control National Research Laboratory, which was designated by Ministry of Science and Technology, Korea. He was a Visiting Scientist at the T. J. Watson Research Center, IBM, Yorktown Heights, NY, from 1991 to 1992, conducting precision assembly using the magnetically levitated robot wrist. He also worked as a Visiting Scientist at the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory, Tsukuba, Japan, for three months in 1995, investigating the area of mobile manipulation system. From September 2003 to February 2008, he has been working as a Project Manager of Intelligent Service Robots and u-Computing area at Ministry of Information and Communication, Republic of Korea where his main duties include R&D planning, managing, evaluation, commercialization and policy advising in the fields, and from December 2006 to February 2008, he also worked as IT Policy Advisor to Minister at the same Ministry where he managed R&D programs for whole ICT area while giving policy advisor to Minister in terms of activities of industries, technical mega-trend, revitalization of small and medium size industries and future R&D plan. From March 2008, he joined again KIST and served as a Director of Robotics/Systems Division, KIST from November 2009 to August 2010, and as a Vice President, External Affairs, KIST from September 2010 to December 2010. He is now a principal research scientist of Interaction and Robotics Research Center, and Director of R-Learning Supporting Center, KIST. His research interests include information and communication technology, bio-robotics for quality of life, and network based intelligent service robots.