Results and Outlooks of Robot Education in Republic of Korea

Approximately one century has passed since a Czech dramatist Capek Karel used a word “robot” for the first time in his satirical work “Rosumovi Univerzální Roboti (Rossum's Universal Robots)” in 1921. Indeed, the existence of a robot started with a literary imagination, when the word was used for the first time about one century ago, but the rot becomes an entity inseparable from human life, including housework and even nursing, in the contemporary society. Today, we have come to see intelligent robots going so far as not only to think and move of their own accord, but also revealing their feelings on their faces. That kind of robots is represented by ASIMO developed in 1980 by Honda in Japan, KISMET developed in the late 1990s by MIT in America, and HUBO developed in 2004 by KAIST in South Korea. Like this, robot research is currently led by Japan, the United States and the Republic of Korea. This presentation is about the robot education system currently implemented from elementary through high schools, the education results and the future prospects in South Korea. On the whole, robot education begins at college levels in America and Japan, but it is made in a systematic way after regular curricular activities at elementary schools in the Republic of Korea. In addition, more than 1000 private institutes for robot education are driving a booming trade and numerous robot competitions, including the International Robot Olympiad (IRO), are held in South Korea. Therefore, not only is the Republic of Korea expected to take the advantageous position first in the future robot education market, but the current robot education system in South Korea will be able to be a good guide for that which will be carried out throughout the world in a few years in the future.