A laboratory, which plays a key role in technology development related to robots, which is emerging as one of the core technologies in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, is currently attracting public attention.

It is the 'Field Robotics Lab' of Pukyong National University's Engineering College, led by Professor Suh Jin-Ho (Dept. of Mechanical System Engineering).

Professor Suh's research team recently drew attention as it was selected as the lead organization for the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries' 'Smart Technology Development Project for Distribution of Fresh Marine Products 2021'. The estimated cost of the project is up to 12.1 billion won over five years.

Robots and artificial intelligence (AI) are also a keyword in the 'Technology Development of a Smart Automated Production System’, a task being promoted by this project. It is to develop a smart automated production system by applying robots and AI to the field of seafood processing, a traditional labor-intensive industry.

Accordingly, the research team of 

Professor Suh started to develop an automation system for production core processes △such as pretreatment, selection, processing, and packaging for marine products, △an intelligent information-based data management and smart inspection system, and △an autonomous recognition smart process control system especially for seaweed, oysters, and fish cakes.

Professor Suh said, "I think commercialization is one of the most important purposes of research. I am focusing on research to make robots used in the field, not laboratory robots, thinking that technology that can become a product is the best, not the best technology becomes a product."

His will is clearly showed in his major and research field. His major is field (disaster/marine) robot development, focusing on various robot mechanisms and system integration control. Professor Suh's research areas include technology development of disaster robotics, autonomous underwater robotics and smart farming technologies, and source/core technology of field robots.

Field robots are robots in a wide range of the fields with a good future, excluding home and general service robots. The robots that can be mainly used in actual field environments in national defense, agriculture and social safety, etc. It is a robot that does things that people cannot or is difficult to do, and that works by itself in extreme environments such as disaster environments.

Professor Suh's work stands a giant in the field robotics sector. He served as the Directive Research Engineer and the Head of the Safety Robot Project at Korea Institute of Robotics & Technology Convergence (KIRO). He Currently serves as the Professor of Mechanical System Engineering Department at Pukyong National University. Prior to this, he was a research member in the team POSROBOT at POSCO and worked as an affiliated professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Pohang University of Science & Technology (POSTECH), served Promoting Director of IT Robots at the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP).

Based on his capabilities, he not only developed the project related to the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries as described above, but also pushing ahead with the △technology of the detective robots for investigating in narrow space (Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy), △technology development for field use support of disaster safety robots (Ministry of the Interior and Safety), and △operation for the remote control mobile measuring robots and technology development (Ministry of Science and Technology) and △development of underwater glider launching/retrival apparatus (Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries) as major government projects related to robots.

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