Daedong-KIRO complete field demonstration required to commercialize autonomous transportation robots
Daedong-KIRO complete field demonstration required to commercialize autonomous transportation robots
- Daedong opened its new Robotics Center earlier this year to pull its weight behind its robot business. Robots evaluated during the harvest season at apple farms in October
- Robot uses autonomous driving technology to follow workers without any control input, and transports cargo to a designated location when ordered to return
- Each unit can work for up to eight hours when fully charged. No user input is required, which makes it highly effective in reducing worker fatigue and labor cost
Daedong has developed an autonomous robot capable of following workers around and delivering its payload to designated locations autonomously
On November 3, Daedong (Co-CEOs Kim Jun-sik and Won Yu-hyun), Daedong Group’s future ag-tech platform subsidiary, announced that the Daedong-KIRO Robotics Research Center hosted a “Robotics Demonstration and Performance Briefing Session” on October 31 in Daehwa-myeon, Pyeongchang-gun, Gangwon-do, to report the Center’s progress on its robotics development and to demonstrate one of its autonomous transportation robots.
Earlier this year, Daedong opened its joint robotics center in cooperation with the Korea Institute of Robotics and Technology Convergence (hereinafter “KIRO,” Director Yeo Jun-gu) at Daedong Mobility’s Seoul office (Seocho-gu) in order to launch its business in both the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors going forward. The company’s goal is to develop following robots for autonomous crop transportation, multipurpose agricultural robots that can be deployed throughout the entire crop cycle, including tillage, seeding, and harvesting, indoor delivery robots, and special industrial robots for companies such as POSCO by 2025.
At the event, attended by Daedong CEO Yoo Won-hyun, KIRO Director Yeo Jun-gu, and KT AI Robot Platform Manager Park Sang-mok, first-year results from the Robotics Center were presented to give the audience a quick idea of how far Daedong’s robotics business has come in just a year. Most notably, Daedong announced that it had developed a tracking robot system and VCU for integrated control, whereas KIRO said it successfully developed new autonomous driving, tracking control, and safety control technology using various sensors. Meanwhile, KT and Daedong AgTech unveiled a new remote control solution that uses data transmitted from each autonomously operating robot.
The new robot featuring all three systems was developed with a focus on helping workers easily and conveniently transport necessary loads using its autonomous driving function in various industrial settings. It follows workers and moves autonomously in designated areas by processing data from wire sensors, vision sensors, and GPS. Even without any user input, the robot understands its work environment and follows the worker by stopping and turning when there is an obstacle, maintaining a certain distance from the worker. The robot autonomously moves to a designated location once the operator commands it to return home. When the operator instructs the robot to offload its cargo onto a truck standing by to move the cargo off-premises, the robot automatically adjusts its height to match the loading bay of the truck, helping streamline the overall process. The robot has a 1,127(L) x 907(W) x 294(H)mm, loading bed, it can carry a maximum load of 200kg, and it can work for up to eight hours on a single charge.
Prior to the event, Daedong did a demo for its trailing and transporting robot to harvest apples over a 2-week period from October 16 to 31 at an apple orchard in Pyeongchang-gun. Kim Hee-tak (born in 1961; Daehwa-myeon, Pyeongchang-gun), who used Daedong’s robot to harvest apples, said, “Compared to a cart powered by an internal combustion engine, Daedong’s robot is quiet and completely smoke-free. But most importantly, a big advantage is that autonomous driving does not require any manual input from me, which reduces fatigue and labor costs because I can do the same job with fewer workers. I’d love to buy one right away because I can use it in the field without any special training.”