The Tale Of South Korea - Shrinking Populations and Rising Robot Numbers
South Korea has the world's highest Robot Density and one of the lowest birth rates. Korea's present may become the World's future.
Aaron’s Thoughts On The Week
“As the sound of the playgrounds faded, the despair set in. Very odd what happens in a world without children’s voices. I was there at the end” – “Miriam,” Children of Men
This week, there was a lot of news about Boston Dynamic’s new all-electric ATLAS humanoid robot. There was a lot of fanfare about the retirement of the OG ATLAS, aka the one that used hydraulics, to the newer version being introduced. Not only should Boston Dynamics’ engineers and technicians be happy with their new, very impressive robot, but the Marketing Department, which pretty much dominated the news cycle, should also take a bow for the creativity in rolling out the new robot over a 48-hour news cycle.
You will be able to read more about that announcement further down in the newsletter, and there is little doubt about what our “Robot Video Of The Week” will be. However, I decided to focus this week’s column on where the newest ATLAS robot appears to be heading—somewhere I, too, will be heading soon: South Korea.
For the robotics industry, South Korea is a shining beacon of where robotics is heading. With the highest robot density in the world, South Korea is the only place where robots are replacing other robots in various tasks as prices for robots continue to drop. However, even this points to some serious underlying issues that are not unique to just South Korea but to other developed nations such as the US and Japan.
Low Birth Rates = Fewer Workers
Earlier this year, South Korea confirmed that its birth rate had dropped to the lowest in the world at 0.68 births per woman (see graph below), well below the 2.1 births required to maintain a country’s population outside of immigration. In January 2024, only 21,400 births were recorded down 8% from January 2023. It was also reported that the average age of a South Korean woman having her first child was 33.
South Korea's 51 million population is projected to halve by the end of this century, which is the top risk to economic growth and the social welfare system. The country's major political parties are focusing on population growth in their election planks to encourage childbirth, as fertility rates continue to decline. Similar struggles are being experienced by neighboring Japan and China.
President Moon Jae-in of South Korea has launched various policies to encourage women to have more children. One of these policies is to provide cash incentives for families. Starting in 2022, every child born received a cash bonus of 2 million won ($1,850) to help cover prenatal expenses. Moreover, families will receive a monthly payout that increases every month until the baby turns one. Other incentives include free daycare, subsidized pay during childcare leave, and even group blind dates for public servants to help them find partners.
Even with these incentives, the number of children born is not changing. There are also continued signs that, even with these incentives, numerous other factors are making people hold off on having children. Going through them would turn this column into a full-fledged book, so let’s focus on where South Korea and other countries are in the same boat.
Mothers Matter
Women have made amazing progress in the last 100 years, but there is still a long way to go. For one, there is still a big pay gap between men and women. Unfortunately, the majority of this gap for developed nations is due to the role of childbirth and its impact on women’s careers and wages.
In 2018, Vox published a series of articles on the Pay Gap and the so-called “Childcare Penalty” women endured when they left the workforce for a period of time only to return to lower pay. Men did not experience this penalty until much later if at all.
As part of the series, it was pointed out that developed countries that addressed the pay gap and created a sense for women that they were not giving up on their careers to have children saw both higher participation of women in the workforce and larger families. Looking at new data from 2022 and 2023, there is some truth in this.
South Korea is well known for not having a significant gender pay gap, with Koran women getting 68% of the pay of their working counterparts. Japan has an even worse gender pay gap. Both countries are also combating the lowest birth rates in the world. Many experts point out that women in both South Korea and Japan see having children as a career killer and, therefore, don’t see it as a wise decision for themselves in the long term.
Countries like Iceland, which has closed the gender pay gap the most in the world, have a much higher birth rate than Japan and Korea. Iceland also has an extensive support network for young mothers pre and post-birth. So, while incentives after childbirth are picking up in Korea, the real issue that should be addressed is the pay gap Korean women are staring down before they even get pregnant should be the more significant focus.
The Gender Pay Gap is something all countries seeing shrinking birth rates should focus on. If women know that they will be supported before, during, and after the birth of their child, they will be more encouraged to have children. If women see having children as career suicide, then there needs to be efforts to counter those thoughts.
As a realist, I know that we will not return to birth rates of 2.1 births per woman. However, we are now to the point where there should no longer be a gender pay gap. I don’t care what a person has between their legs; I want the jobs and tasks we need done to get done. People doing the same work should be paid the same. People should be able to attend to family matters as they arise and not be financially “punished” for those decisions. Companies and organizations need to realize that if they want to have workers in the future, they better start paying their current workers equally.
Robots Are Helping, But Still Need Humans
South Korea has been praised a lot for having embraced robotics. It is blazing new paths in robot technologies and leading the field of countries in robots for workers. However, it is becoming more apparent daily that this leadership is more out of necessity than because it is happening “naturally.”
Earlier this year, the International Federation of Robotics released their 2022 Robot Density numbers and once again South Korea was at the top, but there were some troubling points starting to show for them and fellow low birth rate nation Japan.
In 2021, South Korea was the only country to hit the 1,000 robots to 10,000 workers ratio. In 2022, South Korea hit 1,012 robots per 10,000 workers. However, that was only 1.2% growth. Compare this with China, which saw a 21% growth (322 to 392), and the US, which grew at 4%. On average, the world’s robot density grew by nearly 8%. Only Japan had a lower growth rate amongst the top 10 countries in robot density to Korea’s.
While Korea is still the world leader in robots for workers and will probably be for the rest of this decade, the slowing installation rate points to potentially more significant future issues.
Upon announcing the latest version of ATLAS, Boston Dynamics stated that the first customer to sign up to use the new humanoid would be Hyundai, Boston Dynamic’s South Korean owners. No one was surprised by this announcement based on where other humanoid robots are doing their first commercial pilots to prove themselves.
In the future, ATLAS could start driving South Korea’s Robot Density even higher than it is today. Hyundai’s new innovation center in Singapore shows all of its ideas about using some of the new robots coming to the market.
However, the question will be, “Who will program and maintain Korea’s robots going forward?” Similar to Japan, Korea is not known for being open to immigration. So, who will install, let alone build, the next wave of robots for South Korea?
Most countries in the world have an immigration population between 3% and 4%; Korea has only a 2.3% immigrant population, with nearly a third of those immigrants being ethnic Koreans born outside of the country holding other citizenships. This also points to potential limitations on how much more Korea can grow its robot population without a proper number of support people. Korea is already starting to see fewer robot companies being created in the country. There is growing concern that cheaper Chinese robots are undercutting Korean robot firms with cheaper prices and faster install times.
It will be interesting to see where ATLAS is manufactured going forward. Will ATLAS be built in the US near Boston Dynamics and then shipped to South Korean factories for use? Will US techs find themselves traveling to South Korea to install more robots or take service calls? We will see if here soon if robot technicians are going become global travelers.
No Easy Answers
As I prepare to board my flight to Korea, I look forward to listening to and discussing this topic more with those who are dealing with both being #1 in the world and why there is still work to be done. I am looking forward to seeing all of the robots that call South Korea home.
As I stated here, there are many reasons that our populations continue to shrink. I only highlighted a select few. However, it does come down to treating all of us humans as equals. When we do that, we actually solve a lot of problems. Respecting differences and moving together in a common goal always will go faster than any technology will take us. At the end of the day, the solutions that will carry us the farthest will also be human-centric.
We humans determine our robotic future. The fear for too many has always been that robots will replace humans. Well, they are if we are not going to replace ourselves, and that is something we need to do on our own. Robots are the remedy to a shrinking workforce, but they are not the cause, at least not at this point. When we all understand that, we will not only see robots as the tools they are and us as the humans we should be.
Robot News Of The Week
Boston Dynamics unveils new Atlas robot for commercial use
Boston Dynamics Inc. has retired its hydraulic humanoid robot, Atlas, after 15 years of development and introduced its electric successor designed for commercialization. The next generation of Atlas focuses on delivering the most capable mobile robots for solving the toughest industry challenges. Spot and Stretch remain the company's other robots used for facility inspection and unloading trucks. Boston Dynamics was acquired by SoftBank in 2017 and then by Hyundai in 2020. To continue pure research, Hyundai founded the Boston Dynamics AI Institute in 2022.
Locus Robotics Reaches 3 Billion Picks Milestone, Shatters Industry Records
Locus Robotics, the leader in autonomous mobile robot solutions for warehouse fulfillment, recently reached a milestone of having performed 3 billion picks across its global deployments. This feat was achieved just 33 weeks after the company’s two billionth pick. Locus Robotics’ impressive growth trajectory is a clear indication of the value their proven solutions bring to customers, enabling them to improve productivity, lower costs, and stay ahead of the competition.
Mentee Robotics exits stealth mode to launch new AI-driven humanoid robot
Mentee Robotics has unveiled its first bipedal humanoid robot prototype, which incorporates AI at every level of its operations. The company's founders include experienced professionals in the fields of AI, computer vision, natural language processing, and machine learning. The robot is capable of understanding natural-language commands by using artificial intelligence and can perform a range of tasks including navigation, locomotion, scene understanding, object detection and localization, grasping, and natural language understanding. Mentee Robotics is targeting two primary markets initially with the Mentee humanoid: household and warehouse. It is planning to release a production-ready prototype by Q1 2025.
Cybernetix Ventures partners with the Pittsburgh Robotics Network
Cybernetix Ventures has announced a partnership with the Pittsburgh Robotics Network to set up Pittsburgh’s robotics startups for success. The goal is to bring more of the cluster’s investable robotics opportunities to global markets. Cybernetix focuses on robotics, automation, and industrial AI investments and aims to connect the PRN’s startups with potential customers, later-stage investors, financial institutions, and acquirers. The collaboration was announced at the Agriculture & Robotics Summit, where Cybernetix launched its expanded focus on agriculture and climate robotics.
Robot Research In The News
Octopus inspires new suction mechanism for robots
Scientists at the University of Bristol have developed a robotic suction cup inspired by the adaptive suction abilities of octopus biological suckers. Their findings, published in the journal PNAS, show how they were able to create an artificial fluidic system to mimic the musculature and mucus structures of biological suckers. This mechanism has great potential for industrial applications, such as providing a next-generation robotic gripper for grasping a variety of irregular objects. The team plans to build a more intelligent suction cup, by embedding sensors into the suction cup to regulate its behavior.
How 3D printers can give robots a soft touch
According to a recent study in the journal IEEE Transactions on Robotics, soft skin pads made from thermoplastic urethane that double as sensors can be efficiently manufactured using 3D printers. The pads function as both soft skin for a robotic arm and pressure-based mechanical sensors and can help with safety and operational functionality. The new manufacturing technique is scalable and can be easily adapted to new robotic systems.
Using sim-to-real reinforcement learning to train robots to do simple tasks in broad environments
A team of roboticists at the University of California, Berkeley, has trained a robot to walk in unfamiliar environments while it carried different loads, all without toppling over. They used sim-to-real reinforcement learning to train Digit, the robot, to navigate a path along a sidewalk in an unknown part of a town, recover after being repeatedly assaulted by a large ball, walk across materials that might cause it to trip, carry a backpack, a bag of trash, and personal items around. The researchers suggest that this approach could be used to train robots in real-world environments such as the home, office, or factory floor, making robots more useful.
Robot Workforce Story Of The Week
Wentzville’s robotics team is elite. It’s aiming to be the best in the world
The Ratchet Rockers is a robotics team of 32 high school students from Wentzville, Missouri. They are ranked ninth out of more than 2,800 teams in the U.S. and 11th in the world, according to the robotics tracking website Statbotics. The team will compete in the international high school robotics championship in Houston, where they’ll battle hundreds of teams from around the world. Their robot, named Riot, can throw foam rings called “notes” into goals at a speed of about 20 mph. The competition’s theme is music, and each team’s goal is to launch as many notes as possible into goals.
Robot Video Of The Week
There are times that it is a no-brainer on what the Robot Video of the Week will be and this is probably the week that it goes beyond being a no-brainer. Boston Dynamics completely OWNED the internet this week, so if you have not seen this video yet, you probably are living under a rock.
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