Hyundai Celebrates 10,000th Robot

Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. surpassed 10,000 in its accumulated number of industrial robot production.
The company has produced its 10,000th industrial robot 20 years after turning out its first robot in 1986.
The 10,000th robot, a spot-welding robot named "HX165," will be delivered to Kia Motors Corp.'s Slovakian assembly plant to which the company sold $30 million worth of industrial robots earlier this year.

Hyundai Heavy Industries held a ceremony last Friday to commemorate the event at its Ulsan plant and confirmed its goals of producing 2,000 units annually and to become the fifth largest robot maker in the world by 2010.
Other than welding robots, Korea's largest industrial robot manufacturer plans to produce laser robots, cleaning robots and wireless robots, since the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy selected robot technology as one of the 10 economic growth engines, along with information and biotechnologies last year.
The company has 43 percent of the domestic industrial robot market share.

By Hwang Si-young

The Korea Herald