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The day when friendly helper robots will mind children, clean up and stand guard is not far away.
The Ministry of Information and Communication said Wednesday it will launch robotic home helpers at the very reasonable price of around W1 million (US$1,000) in a test market from October next year. Information Minister Chin Dae-je said, ¡°I expect the ¡®one household, one robot¡¯ era will come in 2020.¡± The low-priced robot project will create W1.5 trillion (US$1.5 billion) in added value, Chin added.
The ministry¡¯s network robots come in three types - the relatively smart education robot Jupiter, which reads English fairy tales to children using voice recognition software, the simpler remote-controlled cleaning robot Netoro, and the e-mail-literate telecommunication robot Roboid. Looking remarkably similar to R2D2 in ¡°Star Wars¡±, they will be made by robotics firms Yujin Robotics, Hanool Robotics and I.O. Tech.
The key to the ministry¡¯s robot project lies in linking robots with the broadband convergence network (BcN) built by KTF and SK Telecom to control their operation. They are run not by expensive built-in software but through a mobile high-speed Internet connection. And like something out of a space-age fantasy, users can tell them from outside the home to do the housework using a home-automation kit.
If a central server gets hit by bugs, pounded by hacker attacks, or malfunctions due to system instability, robots will likely pose a variety of hazards, not least the theft of personal data.
¡°Since robots operate as quasi-artificial intelligence, unlike PCs, they can potentially harm human beings, especially the elderly or children,¡± the minister said. ¡°That¡¯s why we are going to concentrate our efforts on the security or stability of the system.¡±
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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