Control a Robot with a Cellphone

South Korea's SK Telecom is planning to launch a home security robot that can be controlled by a mobile phone. This service is scheduled to be launched by the first part of this year. The Home Network Service is an upgraded service that lets customers receive, via their cellular phones, text messages or pictures regarding any home emergency situation such as a fire or gas leak. This notification is transmitted by a camera and sensor-equipped robot at the home. SK Telecom will introduce this service in cooperation with Most-I-Tech, an artificial intelligence solution developer in Korea.

Unlike the limited existing service that informs customers of emergency situations at the home through a fixed camera or sensor, this service lets customers constantly monitor the entire conditions at their house, on a real-time basis through a moving robot.

In particular, if strangers break into a house the moving robot takes and transmits photos of them in real time. Or if a fire or gas leak occurs, the robot's automatic detection and alarm sensor transmits the emergency situation to the customers' handsets immediately. Therefore, the service users can be free of concern about their houses while they are out.

Since initiating the Tele-monitoring service of sea contamination in the year 2000, SK Telecom has been providing a home network service that can control the gas valve and main gate of the house from a far distance by cellular phone, and Telemetry (Tele-measurement and control). In the future, the company plans to expand its service area to Tele-Medicine Monitoring that informs medical doctors of a patients' blood pressure or electrocardiogram, from far distances.

Kyu Kwan Lim, head of SK Telecom's Business Solution Division said, "We will keep developing a variety of new Telemetry service business models that go beyond existing Tele-controlling and Tele-measuring services. This will further prepare us for the upcoming ubiquitous mobile society". To this end, SK Telecom will further strengthen its cooperative ties with other service-affiliated companies.

In the future, the company plans to expand this service area to Tele-medicine."

Posted to the site on 12th March 2004