Stickybot: The Global Nature of New Technology

Stickybot" is a quadruped robot capable of climbing smooth surfaces, such as glass, acrylic and whiteboard using directional adhesive.  What is more interesting for the purpose of this post is that Sangbae Kim, a Korean Ph.D. student at Stanford University, was the lead designer of this amazing little robot.  A graduate of Yonsei University, Sangbae has already completed an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford and is working on his Ph.D with a special focus on bio-inspired robots.  If you doubt at all that this is inspirational work, please view the embedded video of "Stickybot" in action.  In the mid-1990s I taught for two years at the National University of Singapore and on more than one occasion I fell asleep after watching a tiny gecko crawl across the ceiling of my bedroom.  The biological similarities to real geckos that Kim Sangbae and his team have captured are truly amazing!  For those of you wishing to explore this in more depth, I recommend Mr. Kim's website.
All of this is very significant in light of my earlier posts about South Korea's goals for its robotics industry. Korea has declared its intent to focus on service robots, including networked robots.  It requires only a little imagination to think about what future versions of "Stickybot" and other biomimetic robots might offer in this regard.
Kim Sangbae has, appropriately, received many accolades for his work.  What I'd like to stress here are the following aspects of this story.

• It shows clearly that advanced technology development these days is inherently global or transnational. 
• Korea's future technology development and competitiveness will draw on students educated in Korea, the U.S. and other parts of the world.
• It seems that South Korea has a bright future in robotics.

I hope you all enjoy the video!  More on this topic in future posts.

Robotics and Korean Creativity

I have frequently heard criticisms of the Korean approach to education that suggest it relies too much on memorization and testing and does not encourage creativity.  That is partly why the Washington Post article about Virginia Tech professor Dennis Hong caught my eye this morning.  As I suspected, he is one of the more than six million Koreans living overseas, away from their home country.  The article describes how Professor Hong grew up and eventually became a star in humanoid robotics in the U.S.
Some years ago, I had an interesting encounter with Sangbae Kim who, as a Stanford graduate student, was centrally involved in the creation of Stickybot, a gecko-like robot.   Dr. Kim was kind enough to stop by my office at the Fulbright building and we had a fascinating discussion of his background and how he became interested in this field.   He is now a professor at MIT and in  charge of their new Biomimetic Robotics Lab. The Youtube video of Stickybot embedded in my blog post is still worth viewing one more time.
Draw your own conclusions about Korean creativity.

Robots and disaster risk reduction

I didn't anticipate another post this year on the topic of robotics, but was prompted to write this one by an item in the news that featured the work of Professor Sangbae Kim at MIT, a young researcher whom I had the privilege to meet a few years ago.  In 2009, while he was still a graduate student at Stanford University, I ran across a video of the robot called "Stickybot" that he and his steam had developed.  I met Sangbae Kim and did two posts on the topic, in 2009 and 20011.  Little did I realize at that time how our paths might cross again.  Over the past two years, my department at SUNY Korea has collaborated closely with the UN office for disaster risk reduction in Songdo, SafeNet Forum, and the Red Cross (both the Korean Red Cross and the International Federation of Red Cross Red Crescent Societies) and our colleagues from my department at Stony Brook University in New York.  With Stony Brook, we're developing a new master's degree emphasis on digital technologies for disaster risk reduction.  Stay tuned!

Naver hires MIT professor Kim Sangbae: Naver Labs in the robotics industry

As reported in the Korea Joongang Daily, Naver Labs has hired MIT professor Kim Sangbae as a technical consultant.  Readers of this blog will know that I met and first posted in 2009 about Mr. Kim's role in the creation of a Gecko-like robot called "Stickybot." (see earlier posts here)  According to the Korea Joongang Daily article, Professor Kim will be advising on a range of possibilities, including the use of bio-mimetic robots to analyze location data and help in drawing high definition 3D maps for autonomous vehicles.  Congratulations to both Naver and Prof. Kim!