To prepare for the full-fledged era of artificial intelligence and the space age, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy is sowing seeds for research into future innovative industrial technologies.

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy announced on the 22nd that it has selected three new research themes for 2024 for the 'Industrial Technology Alchemist Project', a research and development (R&D) project, and will begin announcing research projects to recruit domestic researchers in related fields from the 22nd.

The Grand Challenge Committee, newly launched in September of last year, comprehensively reviewed the challenge, innovation, and industrial and social impact through three months of discussion. Accordingly, three promising technologies were selected as new themes for 2024: Ultimate semiconductors, humanoids, and hyper-connected intelligent manufacturing platforms, which will lead the artificial intelligence (AI) era as future semiconductor devices.

Extreme semiconductors refer to semiconductors that enable electronic devices to operate stably in extreme environments such as outer space, other planets, disaster situations, high temperatures, extremely low temperatures, ultra-high pressure, high magnetic fields, and exposure to radiation. The goal is to develop new concept future semiconductor devices that overcome the limitations of existing silicon semiconductors and power semiconductors.

The next-generation humanoid robot aims to develop a next-generation humanoid robot that can perform high-intensity, high-risk physical labor in daily life and manufacturing sites on its own and communicate with humans by utilizing AI to think and communicate like a human and measure senses beyond humans, such as magnetic fields.

The last hyper-connected intelligent manufacturing platform is an R&D project based on the concept that even if you don't own a factory, if you have an idea, AI will automatically derive the optimal design drawings and processes and find and connect you to the necessary factories.

The goal is to build a hyper-connected, intelligent manufacturing platform that allows anyone to create products wherever and however they want, without constraints of time and space.

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy will support the three themes above through a three-stage competitive process with a total of KRW 67.1 billion over seven years until 2030. This year, it plans to select six or so concept research projects (about 18 in total) for each theme and provide a total of KRW 2.6 billion, with about KRW 200 million per project.

This project provides support of approximately KRW 200 million (6 times) for concept research (1 year), KRW 500 million (3 times) for preliminary research (1 year), and KRW 1 time for the main research (5 years), for a total of KRW 4 billion per year.

The announcement for new research projects will be available until the 22nd of next month, and detailed information about the announcement can be found on the Industrial Technology Research and Development (R&D) Information Portal.