Physical AI Brings 24-Hour Smart Factories Closer, Aiming to Export Entire Plants

[Anchor]

Three major mega-projects being promoted as future growth engines for South Korea are starting to gain momentum. Physical AI projects worth 1.4 trillion won in the Jeonbuk and Gyeongnam regions have been unveiled.

Reporter Park Jaehyeon has the details.

[Reporter]

Robots move incessantly to manufacture automobile steering wheels.

They look similar to general industrial robots, but sensors throughout the devices transmit their movements in real-time to a virtual environment, known as a "digital twin."

The data sent by the robots is used to train AI in the virtual space to find areas for improvement, such as movement paths, which are then applied back to the robots.

[Lee Seok-geun / CEO, Auto Steering System Manufacturer: "Our goal is to create a factory that can operate 24 hours a day without any human presence and with the lights turned out. Operating 24 hours is essential to match manufacturing costs in Southeast Asia."]

At this company, which produces vehicle brake parts, AI training is underway to improve the accuracy of defective part detection.

Work is also taking place to train AI to catch minute malfunctions in robots and to replace forklifts with mobile robots.

[Yang Kwang-mo / General Manager, Brake System Manufacturer: "For areas where fluctuations in operational rates and quality occur due to reliance on humans, the AI makes judgments and resolves them immediately..."]

In university laboratories participating in industry-academia cooperation, individual agent AIs responsible for production, logistics, and safety are being tested.

[Kim Soon-tae / Head of Jeonbuk National University Physical AI Convergence Technology Project Promotion Group: "The factory operates on its own, autonomously improves production problems, and even optimizes processes by itself."]

A project to drive the AI transformation of manufacturing is now underway in earnest, applying technologies developed in laboratories to actual factories and using the data secured there to further train AI.

The government plans to invest approximately 1.4 trillion won over five years in the manufacturing sites of Jeonbuk and Gyeongnam to build a physical AI ecosystem.

[Lee Do-gyu / Head of Information and Communications Policy Office, Ministry of Science and ICT: "We consider this a core field that will shoulder our future. That is why it has been selected as one of the three major mega-projects, and we are gathering national capabilities for it."]

The ultimate goal of South Korea's physical AI initiative is to export entire factories packaged together with AI-optimized robots and AI managers.

(Photo: Yonhap News - Wait, original says: 영상취재 : 김학모·최호준, 영상편집 : 김준희)
Video by Kim Hak-mo and Choi Ho-jun | Video editing by Kim Jun-hee
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.