"Achieving Fully Autonomous Disaster Prevention with Added AI Features"
SK Innovation announced on the 30th that Sheco, an environmental social venture nurtured and supported by the company, received the 'CES Innovation Award' ahead of the opening of the world's largest electronics and IT exhibition, 'CES 2024,' in January next year.
At CES 2024, Sheco's new model of small-scale marine oil spill recovery equipment, 'Sheco Ark-M,' which collects oil through suction and adsorption methods, won awards in two categories: ▲Drones & Unmanned Systems and ▲Human Security for All.
Sheco is a social venture that signed the 'SV2 Impact Partnering Season 2' agreement supported by SK Innovation in 2020.
The Sheco Ark-M is a small-scale containment robot capable of performing three tasks: pollutant recovery, oil-water separation, and pollutant storage. It automates the hazardous marine containment work, which traditionally involves manually throwing and retrieving oil-absorbing materials such as oil absorbents, thereby improving not only work efficiency but also the safety and convenience of environmental cleanup workers. It requires no assembly and can be remotely controlled, making it usable even by non-experts.
Kwon Ki-seong, CEO of Sheco, said, "Sheco Ark-M was registered as the first containment robot under the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries following the announcement of partial amendments to the subordinate legislation of the Marine Environment Management Act in April this year." He added, "We will lead the realization of fully autonomous containment by adding autonomous driving and big data accident environment analysis functions to Sheco Ark-M, which has also been reflected in the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy's 'Advanced Robot Industry Strategy 1.0.'"
In October 2021, Sheco signed a business agreement with the Korea Marine Environment Management Corporation and SK Innovation to jointly conduct campaigns for marine environmental protection by collecting marine pollutants.
Sheco plans to develop artificial intelligence (AI) functions capable of recognizing marine pollutants in collaboration with public institutions and domestic and international companies to respond to the demand for robots due to automation and unmanned operations in the global marine containment market.
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