Building a Robot Ecosystem to Enable Any Company to Easily Adopt Robots
Interview with Kim Min-kyo, CEO of Marosol
At Hallym University Sacred Heart Hospital in Anyang, Gyeonggi Province, the first thing you encounter upon entering the hospital is a guide robot. Taking the elevator following the robot, you meet delivery robots transporting medicines and other items. Throughout the hospital, disinfection robots and cleaning robots roam, and care robots in patient rooms assist in connecting with caregivers. Since August 2022, the hospital has introduced a total of 7 types and 73 units of robots. The robot manufacturers vary, including LG, Hyundai Robotics, KT, and Dogu Gonggan. So far, the robots have performed over 30,000 tasks in the hospital. What stands out is that various robots made by different companies perform different tasks in the complex hospital environment, yet they are all operated through a single control system called ‘Sollink.’ This system is currently used in about 190 business sites nationwide, including hospitals, commercial buildings, hotels, resorts, factories, and logistics centers. We met Kim Min-gyo, CEO of the robot startup Marosol, who developed this system, at his office in Gangnam-gu, Seoul.
On the 16th, CEO Kim said, "Robots are not difficult," adding, "We will contribute to lowering the entry barriers of the robot market and fostering the ecosystem that needs to grow." After serving as the head of the strategy team at Doosan Infracore and leading domestic and global market sales at Doosan Robotics, Kim recognized a problem: only large companies were adopting industrial robots, and using them was limited to production technology experts. For the robot industry to grow, companies that had not previously used robots needed to adopt them, but small and medium-sized enterprises found it difficult to utilize robots. Moreover, there were many cases where robots were introduced but not used effectively, leading to complaints that robots made things more inconvenient.
Founded in 2020, CEO Kim decided to approach this problem through data and software. First, he focused on supplying optimal robot solutions by comprehensively listening to customer needs without bias toward any specific robot. The effort did not end with supply; technical support services for aftercare were provided to ensure proper use, and customer feedback was carefully examined. Solutions that received positive responses were separately analyzed to improve recommendation accuracy. Through this, he accumulated experience and know-how by supplying over 300 robot solutions last year alone. Next is software. CEO Kim explained, "People first think of hardware when it comes to robots, but I believed that the industry could not grow with hardware alone," adding, "We enhanced usability and reduced maintenance costs by adding a self-developed integrated control system to the robot hardware recommended to customers."
The result of these efforts to create an environment where anyone can conveniently adopt robots based on data and software is ‘Sollink.’ It is a system that can monitor and command robots from various manufacturers all at once. This year, it has evolved into solutions such as the robot-elevator integrated solution ‘Sollink Linker.’ CEO Kim introduced, "We developed this because customers felt that using robots only on a single floor had low utility," adding, "There are many types of robots and elevators, and linking them individually increases trial and error. We solved this problem with an integrated control solution."
While solidifying the domestic market with Sollink, Marosol is simultaneously pushing for business expansion into the global market. They are discussing projects to supply multiple types of robots together targeting major global robot companies and countries such as the United States and Japan. If successful, Sollink will be exported as software. CEO Kim said, "Marosol’s integrated control solution is a competitive technology that is more than a year ahead in the global market," adding, "We will create meaningful references and initial sales in the global market this year."
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