Daedong from Korea signed an agreement with the Seoul National University’s Graduate School of Data Science to jointly develop an AI-driven agricultural robot. Later this year, first robots for transport in orchards and crop protection are expected to be operating.
The School is specialized in multidisciplinary research and data science education, focused on AI (Artificial Intelligence) algorithms, big data, and computing.
To that end, through its AI Lab, Daedong is in the process of securing and upgrading technology that can simulate outdoor work environments and robot work in a digital space without investing an astronomical amount of money and time. The Graduate School will jointly develop technology to help learn and test the AI of robots using simulated solutions. Both Daedong and the Graduate School plan to use foundation models for robots to respond to a wide range of variables that occur in the agricultural environment and to understand and perform complex work commands.
With the technology developed through its collaboration with the Graduate School, Daedong wants to launch autonomous driving tractors capable of performing various agricultural tasks at an expert level and various agricultural robots that can effectively work on orchards. In fact, Daedong plans to roll out agricultural robots equipped with AI technology, such as transport robots (September) and crop protection robots (December), within the year to speed up its commercialization of agricultural and industrial robots. The company also aims to launch an agricultural multifunctional robot by 2028 that understands and performs complex work commands while responding to various variables from the agricultural environment using Large AI technology engineered for robots.
According to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), the global robot market is expected to jump from USD 32.4 billion in 2022 to USD 43.3 billion in 2028.