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Science & Technology News from the Republic of Korea Ref. No: 652.0
October 2019
Page 1 of 12
EMBASSY OF SWITZERLAND
Contents
Swiss-Korean Joint Research Projects
Developed Self-controlling 'Smart' Fuel Cell Electrode Material
KAIST Develops Core Technology for Ultra-small 3D Image Sensor
Peering into the Nanoworld with Matter-Wave Diffraction
Samsung to unveil new wearable devices with S10
SK Telecom creates 5G-based smart office
LG Innotek eyes expansion in 3D sensing biz
Samsung unveils first foldable gadget
Samsung develops next-generation 5G RF chipsets
LG Electronics unveils 5G smartphone at MWC
Korea is home to 6 unicorn startups
Young researchers’ exchange program
Innovation partnership grants
Zurich Meets Seoul – “Re-Thinking Cities” Workshop
Zurich Meets Seoul - Gamified Learning and the Art of Augmented Reality
Object Identification and Interaction with a Smartphone Knock
A Mathematical Model Reveals Long-Distance Cell Communication Mechanism
A Technology to Transform 2D Planes into 3D Soft and Flexible Structures by Engineering
Adhe-sion between Thin-Films
Hospitals adopt ICT to become 'smarter'
LG Innotek develops first Qualcomm chip-based module for cars
SK hynix develops 1znm DRAM with industry's highest density
Twinny to challenge global robotics heavyweights
Contact Science & Technology Office Embassy of Switzerland in the Republic of Korea Tel: +82 2 3704-4712 Email: [email protected] Website: www.stofficeseoul.ch
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY NEWS
REPUBLIC OF KOREA, October 2019
B. Korea – Switzerland News 2
C. Science News 4
A. Open Calls 2
D. Innovation News 8
E. Start-Up News 11
Science & Technology News from the Republic of Korea October 2019
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A. Open Calls*aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
1. Young Researchers’ Exchange Programme with South Korea
The Leading House Asia and the National Research Foundation (NRF) of the Republic of Korea jointly fund the exchange of young scientists between South Korea and Switzerland.
The instrument funds 3 to 6 months research stays in the partner country. Swiss researchers can apply to ETH Zurich for a stay in South Korea and Korean researchers to NRF for a stay in Switzerland.
Eligibility: PhD Students, young postdocs and in exceptional cases also Master students from Swiss universities, Universities of Applied Sciences and research institutes are invited to apply. The call is open to all scientific disciplines including social sciences and humanities.
Funding: Grants will cover travel costs and a monthly living allowance for a research stay at a Korean university or research laboratory.
Deadline: 29 November 2019.
Details and application form: on ETH Global Website - Mobility
2. Innovation Partnership Grants with China, Japan, South Korea, and the ASEAN Region Innovation partnership grants support the establishment of cooperation between Swiss researchers from universities, universities of applied sciences or public research institutes with non-academic innovation agents in China (incl. Hong Kong and Taiwan), Japan, South Korea and member states of the ASEAN. These agents can be corporates, SMEs or start-ups, innovation parks or similar entities with a focus on applied sciences or technical development.
Eligibility: All senior scientists of Swiss federal and cantonal universities, universities of applied sciences and universities of teachers’ education, as well as public research institutions, are eligible. The Swiss scientist is the main applicant. Innovation agent partners must be senior staff affiliated with a company, start-up, innovation park or similar agency in one of the partner countries. Univer-sities from the partner country can participate as third parties. The call is open to all scientific disci-plines including social sciences and humanities.
Funding: max. 20k CHF
Deadline: 15 November 2019.
Details and application form: on ETH Global Website - Innovation
B. Korea – Switzerland News aaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa < Zurich Meets Seoul > “Re-Thinking Cities” Workshop As part of the “Zurich Meets Seoul” Festival of the two cities, the workshop aimed to facilitate a dialogue on digitalization between players from public and private sector, actively involved in urban planning and development of solutions to urban challenges. The facilitators for the workshop consist of the delegations from University of Zurich, Yonsei University, Seoul National University, Seoul Metropolitan Government, City of Zurich, Root Impact, Impact Hub Zurich, ETH and KAIST. About 60 participants were divided into 3 groups, each group actively participating in exchanges about 1) Smart Cities: Democratic and regulatory challenges, 2) Fostering participation & collaboration in a Smart City – spaces and platforms, and 3) Civic Tech & Citizen Design Science, respectively. The concept of smart city has been approached in various ways and from different perspectives emphasizing challenges and proposing solutions through social platforms. Not only technology in the highlights, but also the need of higher connectivity between people.
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< Zurich Meets Seoul > Gamified Learning and the Art of Augmented Reality For an ETH Meets Seoul event as part of Zurich Meets Seoul Festival, Dr. Robert Sumner, Adjunct Professor at ETH Zurich and Initiator of the Game Technology Center (GTC) at ETH Zurich, and Dr. Joshua A. Jackman, Assistant Professor at Sungkyunkwan University and Strategic Advisor to the DQ Institute, gave an interesting speech, driving the audience to the world of gaming and augmented reality highlighting the importance of digital responsibility as well as education for children. The audience was also given a change to actively participate in a live demonstration of an installation of aug-mented reality technology, bringing paintings to real life. They were able to walk through the sets of artwork with an iPad and experience the augmented reality museum themselves.
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C. Science News aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Object Identification and Interaction with a Smartphone Knock
October 2 - KAIST
<Professor Lee (far right) demonstrate 'Knocker' with his students.>
A KAIST team has featured a new technology, “Knocker”, which identifies objects and executes actions just by knocking on it with the smartphone. Software powered by machine learning of sounds, vibrations, and other reactions will perform the users’ directions. What separates Knocker from existing technology is the sensor fusion of sound and motion. Previously, object identification used either computer vision technology with cameras or hardware such as RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags. These solutions all have their limitations. For computer vision technology, users need to take pictures of every item. Even worse, the technology will not work well in poor lighting situations. Using hardware leads to additional costs and labor burdens. Knocker, on the other hand, can identify objects even in dark environments only with a smartphone, without requiring any specialized hardware or using a camera. Knocker utilizes the smartphone’s built-in sensors such as a microphone, an accelerometer, and a gyroscope to capture a unique set of responses generated when a smartphone is knocked against an object. Machine learning is used to analyze these responses and classify and identify objects. The research team under Professor Sung-Ju Lee from the School of Computing confirmed the applicability of Knocker technology using 23 everyday objects such as books, laptop computers, water bottles, and bicycles. In noisy environments such as a busy café or on the side of a road, it achieved 83% identification accuracy. In a quiet indoor environment, the accuracy rose to 98%. The team believes Knocker will open a new paradigm of object interaction. For instance, by knocking on an empty water bottle, a smartphone can automatically order new water bottles from a merchant app. When integrated with IoT devices, knocking on a bed’s headboard before going to sleep could turn off the lights and set an alarm. The team suggested and implemented 15 application cases in the paper, presented during the 2019 ACM Interna-tional Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2019) held in London last month. Professor Sung-Ju Lee said, “This new technology does not require any specialized sensor or hardware. It simply uses the built-in sensors on smartphones and takes advantage of the power of machine learning. It’s a software solution that everyday smartphone users could immediately benefit from.” He continued, “This technology ena-bles users to conveniently interact with their favorite objects.”
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The research was supported in part by the Next-Generation Information Computing Development Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT and an Institute for Information & Communications Technology Promotion (IITP) grant funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT.
<Figure: An example knock on a bottle. Knocker identifies the object by analyzing a unique set of responses
from the knock, and automatically launches a proper application or service.>
A Mathematical Model Reveals Long-Distance Cell Communication Mechanism
October 15 – KAIST How can tens of thousands of people in a large football stadium all clap together with the same beat even though they can only hear the people near them clapping? A combination of a partial differential equation and a synthetic circuit in microbes answers this question. An in-terdisciplinary collaborative team of Professor Jae Kyoung Kim at KAIST, Professor Krešimir Josić at the Uni-versity of Houston, and Professor Matt Bennett at Rice University has identified how a large community can communicate with each other almost simultaneously even with very short distance signaling. The research was reported at Nature Chemical Biology. Cells often communicate using signaling molecules, which can travel only a short distance. Nevertheless, the cells can also communicate over large distances to spur collective action. The team revealed a cell communi-cation mechanism that quickly forms a network of local interactions to spur collective action, even in large com-munities. The research team used an engineered transcriptional circuit of combined positive and negative feedback loops in E. coli, which can periodically release two types of signaling molecules: activator and repressor. As the signaling molecules travel over a short distance, cells can only talk to their nearest neighbors. However, cell communities synchronize oscillatory gene expression in spatially extended systems as long as the transcrip-tional circuit contains a positive feedback loop for the activator. Professor Kim said that analyzing and understanding such high-dimensional dynamics was extremely difficult. He explained, “That’s why we used high-dimensional partial differential equation to describe the system based on the interactions among various types of molecules.” Surprisingly, the mathematical model accurately simu-lates the synthesis of the signaling molecules in the cell and their spatial diffusion throughout the chamber and their effect on neighboring cells. The team simplified the high-dimensional system into a one-dimensional orbit, noting that the system repeats periodically. This allowed them to discover that cells can make one voice when they lowered their own voice and listened to the others. “It turns out the positive feedback loop reduces the distance between moving points and finally makes them move all together. That’s why you clap louder when you hear applause from nearby neighbors and everyone eventually claps together at almost the same time,” said Professor Kim.
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Professor Kim added, “Math is a powerful as it simplifies complex thing so that we can find an essential under-lying property. This finding would not have been possible without the simplification of complex systems using mathematics." The National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Robert A. Welch Foundation, the Hamill Foundation, the National Research Foundation of Korea, and the T.J. Park Science Fellowship of POSCO sup-ported the research.
<Figure: Complex molecular interactions among microbial consortia is simplified as interactions among points
on a limit cycle (right).>
A Technology to Transform 2D Planes into 3D Soft and Flexible Structures by Engineering Adhesion between Thin-Films
October 21 – DGIST
- DGIST Professor Sohee Kim’s Team developed a technology to produce 3D soft and flexible devices by blowing balloons made of polymeric thin films. - Can be made in various 3D shapes... Expected to have diverse medical and biomedical applications.
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DGIST announced that Professor Sohee Kim’s research team in the Department of Robotics Engineering suc-ceeded in developing a technology to produce flexible 3D medical devices. It is expected to be used in developing various devices with embedded electrical functionality or soft robots.
Professor Sohee Kim’s team developed a new technology for 3D device production that selectively bonds poly-meric thin films using plasma. Since this technology can manufacture 3D flexible devices more easily than the existing methods, it is expected to have a positive impact on the future research.
The existing flexible 3D structures could not avoid manual handling such as directly gluing the top and bottom layers of the structure, or transferring pre-strained patterns on the substrate, which has limited the production efficiency at a very low level.
However, Professor Kim’s team created 3D flexible structures by generating covalent bonds only at the edges of patterns formed between two polymeric thin films with plasma and by injecting air into non-bonded patterns (namely, balloons) to inflate them. Moreover, the new 3D structures can be used as a sensor or actuator1 because metal wires can be easily patterned inside and outside the balloons. A customized 3D device that is in contact with a complicated surface can also be produced using the technology developed by Professor Kim’s team. Since the 3D device is inflated like a balloon where the device is put on, it can have a customized shape along the curvature of a body part with a complex surface, like the human brain. In addition, wire patterns in the micrometer scale can be easily formed inside and outside the 3D structure, which has been difficult so far in the production of 3D structures using conventional microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technologies. It is expected to be widely applied, for instance, for pressure measurement inside the body including the cranium, devices with electrical stimulation and detection functions, and soft robots.
The result of this study was published on the supplementary front page of the ‘ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces’ of the American Chemical Society on Wednesday, October 2. This study was conducted with supports from Basic Research Program of the South Korean Ministry of Science and ICT as well as the DGIST. Ph.D. candidate Hyunmin Moon in the Department of Robotics Engineering and post-doctoral researcher Namsun Chou at Korea Institute of Science and Technology participated in the research as the first co-authors.
1Actuator: A device that operates a machine using electric power.
For more information, contact: Sohee Kim, Professor Department of Robotics Engineering Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST) E-mail: [email protected] Associated Links Research Paper in Journal of ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsami.9b09578
Journal Reference Hyunmin Moon, Namsun Chou, Hee Won Seo, Kyeongyeon Lee, Jinhee Park and Sohee Kim, "Transformation of 2D Planes into 3D Soft and Flexible Structures with Embedded Electrical Functionality", ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. (Online published on August 21st, 2019 and offline published on October 2nd, 2019.)
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D. Innovation News aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaa
Hospitals adopt ICT to become 'smarter' October 7 – Korea Times
<A medical staffer uses a touch panel to control medical devices in an operating room. Courtesy of Olympus
Korea> Hospitals are accelerating their drive to adopt information and communication technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), big data and fifth-generation (5G) network to build a "smart hospital system" with an aim to offer better patient care and improve efficiency, industry officials said Monday. They added more hospitals are increasing their collaborations with IT companies as they can also save opera-tional costs by reducing human error. "By adopting ICT, hospitals can not only improve their patient care service but also reduce operational costs because the digital technology helps medical staff make less mistakes," said an official from Olympus Korea, which sells medical devices. Data also showed a growing number of hospitals have been trying to adopt digital technologies to transform themselves into smart hospitals. According to data by market researcher Frost & Sullivan, 10 percent of hospitals around the world will become or will have launched their projects to become smart hospitals by 2025. Siddharth Shah, a transformational health industry analyst at the researcher, said more hospitals will focus on adopting a smart hospital system in order to improve operational efficiency, clinical excellence and patient-cen-tricity. Samsung Medical Center announced recently it has been developing a 5G-based medical service with mobile carrier KT. The mobile carrier will establish a 5G network at the medical center's proton treatment center, cancer hospital and other facilities enabling medical staff to check patients' information in real time. "Given medical staff have to visit the proton treatment center to see the information of patients on proton treat-ment, the 5G network will improve efficiency of patient care service as the technology can transfer large amounts of data quickly," KT said.
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Rival mobile carrier SK Telecom also joined hands with Yonsei University to launch a smart hospital system, powered by 5G, in April. At Yonsei's new hospital which will be built in Yongin, south of Seoul, the mobile carrier's 5G-enabled services such as AI speakers and augmented reality service for mobile devices will be installed. To improve operational efficiency and patient care, Ewha Womans University Medical Center has adopted Olym-pus' ENDOALPHA integrated operating room system for its newly opened hospital in Gangseo-gu, southwestern Seoul. The ENDOALPHA touch-screen and voice-control system allows surgeons to manage a range of medical devices. "To install the system, Olympus had cooperated with Ewha when the medical center was building a new hospital in southwestern Seoul. The system is expected to improve the operational efficiency and patient care," the Olym-pus official said. "For instance, a hospital in Germany, which adopted the integrated operating room system, performs more sur-geries than before even though it reduced its operating rooms from eight to seven." By Baek Byung-yeul ([email protected])
LG Innotek develops first Qualcomm chip-based module for cars
October 16 – Korea Herald LG Innotek announced Wednesday the company has developed a communications module for automobiles based on Qualcomm’s 5G chip as the first in the world. The 5G communications module, a combination of a communications chip, memory and radio frequency circuit, is a component that enables transmission of data between a vehicle and 5G base station. The module, as small and slim as a credit card, will enable sharing of real-time traffic information, precise location measurement and communication between the vehicle and other objects. It ultimately is aimed for use in auton-omous driving.
<LG Innotek’s 5G automotive communications module (LG Innotek)>
The chipset running on the Qualcomm Snapdragon Automotive 5G Platform can activate the urgent braking function when a self-driving driving a 100 kilometers per hour detects an obstacle about four times quicker than with an LTE chipset due to 5G’s low latency.
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LG highlighted it applied its proprietary radio frequency circuit design technology, high precision and density modularized technology and heat-resistant materials to building the 5G module in order to solve the heat gener-ation problem in 5G vehicle chips. “The successful development of 5G communications module for vehicles will speed up the commercialization of entirely autonomous vehicles and connected cars by manufacturers,” an LG Innotek official said.
By Song Su-hyun ([email protected])
SK hynix develops 1znm DRAM with industry's highest density
October 21 – Korea Times
< 1znm 16-Gigabit DDR4 DRAM developed by SK hynix / Courtesy of SK hynix>
SK hynix has completed the development of 1znm 16-Gigabit Double Data Rate 4 (DDR4) DRAM, the company said Monday, noting that the 16 Gigabit is the industry's highest density for a single chip that offers the largest total memory capacity per wafer among existing DRAMs. The world's second-largest memory chip maker will finish preparations for the mass production of the new product by the end of the year and begin shipment next year in a bid to respond better to rapidly changing demand from global customers. The Korean company said the productivity of the new 1znm DRAM has been improved by about 27 percent, compared to the previous generation, 1ynm. The new product does not require extreme ultraviolet lithography, which is very expensive, giving it cost compet-itiveness. The new product also supports a data transfer rate of up to 3,200 megabits per second, which is the fastest data-processing speed in a DDR4 interface. SK Group's chip-making unit said it has significantly increased power efficiency of the new product, reducing power consumption by about 40 percent compared to modules of the same density made with 1ynm 8-Gigabit DRAM. The company, in particular, applied a new substance that has not been used in the manufacturing process of the previous generation in a bid to maximize the capacitance of the new 1znm DRAM product. Capacitance, a key element of DRAM operation, refers to the amount of electrical charge a capacitor can store. The company has also applied a new design technique in developing the new product to increase operational stability.
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"The 1znm DDR4 DRAM boasts the industry's highest density, speed and power efficiency, making it the best product to meet the changing demands of customers seeking high-performance, high-density DRAM," said Lee Jung-hoon who heads the 1Z TF of DRAM Development and Business. "SK hynix will start mass production and full-scale delivery next year to actively respond to market demand." The company added that it is planning to expand the 1znm technology process to a variety of applications, such as the next-generation mobile DRAM. By Jun Ji-hye ([email protected])
E. Start-Up News aaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Twinny to challenge global robotics heavyweights
October 16 – Korea Herald Startup’s solutions wean mobile robots off GPS, QR codes to save logistics costs In the global race for automation in logistics, unmanned mobile robots are playing an important role, largely with the assistance of an underlying system that varies from QR codes on the floor to beacon sensors on walls and wearable devices. South Korean startup Twinny is one company that is moving the other way by weaning its mobile robotic solutions off the system. By becoming independent, its robots can precisely locate themselves, detect a human to follow and execute the order-picking process for warehouse inventory management, all without any physical connection.
<Twinny co-founders Cheon Young-seok (left) and Cheon Hong-seok speak in an interview with The Korea
Herald during Robo World 2019 on Oct. 9. (Son Ji-hyoung / The Investor)> “Those underlying systems often incur significant maintenance costs, because a slight damage in the system could cause robots’ failure to properly position itself,” said Twinny co-founder Cheon Hong-seok in a recent in-terview with The Investor on the sidelines of the Robot World 2019 at Kintex, Gyeonggi Province. “Warehouses can actually save costs, because there is no need to set up all that infrastructure associated with automated robots,” added Cheon. Twinny’s robotic solutions -- currently at its prototype stage -- can be have an upper edge against global fulfillment solution giants like Amazon’s Kiva once they are deployed, he claimed.
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“The Kiva system requires racks compatible with its own robots and QR codes for positioning, so it prevents ordinary logistics facilities from adopting it,” he said, adding Twinny carts neither need new racks nor infrastruc-ture for robot assistance. Twinny was co-founded in 2015 by Cheon and his twin brother. Based in Daejeon, which is about 140 kilometers south of Seoul, the company recently unveiled a mobile robot lineup in part powered by Velodyne Lidar, so that it would work in indoor facilities with weak GPS signals. The lineup consists of TarGo -- which can detect people even when interrupted by other humans or moving objects -- and NarGo, which is self-driving. “TarGo’s sensors can distinguish human targets, even when two different people wearing the same outfit or twins are disrupting the sensor,” said Twinny’s co-founder Young-seok. Meanwhile, NarGo allows a cart to pull another cart so that the robot carts can be aligned like a cord-free train. Heavy packages can be parceled out in multiple carts, led by a leading cart that navigates the surroundings. “NarGo is tailored mainly for warehouses, while TarGo is more versatile and can be used in supermarkets, air-ports, offices and hospitals.”
<A promotional image of TarGo (left) and NarGo>
The two robots made their debut at Robo World 2019 last month. They can carry objects that weigh up to a combined 100 kilograms. By early next year, Twinny plans to upgrade the capacity to a maximum of 1 ton with an add-on forklift. In terms of velocity, TarGo can move as fast as 1.2 meter per second and NarGo’s maximum speed stands at 0.7 meter every second. TarGo and NarGo both branched out of JangBoGo, which was showcased at Consumer Electronics Show 2019 in Las Vegas. Twinny’s goal is to launch a full-fledged software for the control system that is compatible with partner companies’ fulfillment software or other hardware products like drones to maximize efficiency in logistics management. The startup is looking to raise up to 6 billion won ($5.1 million) series A funding by the end of this year. It is now eyeing business in nations where labor costs “are comparatively high,” such as Korea, Japan and Singapore, as well as Europe and North America. By Son Ji-hyoung ([email protected])
