Samsung to invest in sensor, system software development
Prof. Kim Jang-woo
By Yoon Sung-won
Samsung said Monday it will foster the development of system software for super-capacity computing and materials for sensors as key technologies for the future.
The company said that it has picked 10 research and development (R&D) subjects in the two areas and included them in a 1.5 trillion won ($13.26 billion) investment project for its future technology business.
Expectations are that the nation’s largest conglomerate will have more source technologies to push for the Internet of Things (IoT) business.
“Sensors play key roles in acquiring data and creating information in the IoT environment. So we have chosen creative and challenging R&D subjects in the sensor materials sector,” said Seoul National University’s chemistry professor Kim Seong-keun. Kim led the evaluation team for the smart sensor materials research projects.
Ehwa Womans University’s computer engineering chair-professor Koh Geon, who headed the system software segment evaluation team said: “Korea’s environment for system software development has been poor despite it is a key technology in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector. Now that diverse innovative research projects have been picked in this sector, I expect they will a great help in the growth of related industries here.”
In August 2013, Samsung started the project to foster future technology developments in three key sectors ― basic science, material technology, and information and ICT ― and vowed to invest a total of 1.5 trillion won over 10 years.
A year later, the conglomerate said it would pick additional R&D themes in future technology sectors to add to its project every year. At that time, it added two new areas ― energy storage and harvesting, and IoT security ― and picked 10 related R&D subjects to subsidize.
Samsung has picked 160 subjects so far to foster its project.
Among the 10 R&D subjects chosen this year, five are about smart sensor material for smart living, including the development of three-dimensional hypersensitive full color tactile sensors using nanocrystal materials.
Led by Lee Ji-seok, professor in energy and chemical engineering at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), this project will research materials for the hypersensitive color tactile sensors that can detect both subtle changes in pressure and direction to express them in colors.
These sensors can be used in diverse IoT devices, smart home security systems and healthcare devices for rehabilitation treatment.
In the system software development segment, the development of super-capacity system structures and software was included.
This subject is about developing an operating system and device drivers that give each device priority in control over a system, which has been centralized to processors or server units in existing systems. The company said this new approach will make super-capacity devices such as solid-state drives, network modules and graphic processing units more independent, expandable and universal.
Kim Jang-woo, professor in computer science and engineering at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), will take charge of the research team.