Flying Submarine for Maritime Rescue... Five High-Difficulty Research Projects Fully Launched

Government Finalizes Detailed Plan...Includes Departmental Budgets to Launch R&D from Next Year

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Bong-su] A flying underwater rescue submarine, digital therapeutics for autism treatment, and technology to convert waste oil into ethylene.

Currently, these are highly challenging and difficult tasks with a high possibility of failure. However, if successful, significant innovation is expected, and even if they fail, there is much to learn from the process. The government has selected five such high-difficulty research projects, completed detailed planning, and will begin full-scale research and development (R&D) starting next year.

The Ministry of Science and ICT announced on the 3rd that it has completed the establishment of R&D plans, including project duration and detailed tasks, for five research themes under the 'Innovation Challenge Project' for 2020. The 'Innovation Challenge Project' is a cross-ministerial R&D program that discovers and plans high-difficulty, mission-oriented R&D led by private experts and applies flexible research systems throughout the project execution process. It is part of the 'National R&D Innovation and Challenge Enhancement Plan' announced in May 2019. After reviewing about 400 research themes submitted through calls for proposals to ministries, industry-academia-research institutes, and briefing sessions for government-funded research institutes since May last year, and after external evaluations and consultations with related ministries, five themes were prioritized and selected in September of the same year. Subsequently, detailed planning for each theme to be promoted as individual R&D projects was conducted over about five months with participation from related ministries.

The development of basic raw material processing technology for waste organic materials is expected to overcome the limitations of existing recycling, incineration, and landfill methods, which have cost and environmental pollution issues and inevitably emit carbon dioxide. This is because waste organic materials will be recycled into basic raw materials such as ethylene and acetylene that can be sold. By shifting the paradigm from treating waste organic materials as high-cost disposal targets to high-profit sale targets, it is innovative in minimizing carbon dioxide emissions generated during incineration, landfill, and recycling. The technology to convert all forms of waste organic materials?solid, liquid, and gas?into basic raw materials using plasma at ultra-high temperatures and short times will be attempted for the first time in the world.

The development of an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) technology for rapid initial response to maritime accidents is expected to enable immediate tracking and searching of vessels to quickly rescue lives. Previously, rapid and accurate maritime response was difficult due to preparation time for dispatch, communication breakdowns, and loss of vessel location due to currents, and especially in severe weather, dispatch itself was impossible. With the development of AUVs, it is expected that they can move quickly through the air ahead of rescue teams at any time, track accident vessel locations, and conduct early searches to support smooth subsequent rescue operations.

The development of multipurpose stratospheric drone technology can complement the limitations of the existing satellite-centered weather observation system, which has difficulty in continuously, quickly, and accurately predicting localized and sudden weather phenomena such as typhoons, heavy rain, and heavy snow. Geostationary satellites can observe 24 hours but have difficulty observing the ground precisely, while low Earth orbit satellites can observe the ground precisely but only for about 15 minutes a day. Therefore, by developing an unmanned aerial system capable of long-term operation in the stratosphere, where clouds and wind are weak and sunlight is abundant, a continuous and precise monitoring system that complements satellite limitations can be established.

The development of a hybrid digital therapeutic for autism spectrum disorder treatment aims to enable early diagnosis of autism to prevent progression to severe stages and allow continuous treatment and management of autism spectrum disorder in daily life settings such as home and school without direct visits to medical facilities. It is a form that combines hardware such as sensors, cameras, and VR with software like apps and games, unlike typical digital therapeutics.

The development of DNA memory technology for ultra-large capacity big data permanent preservation is intended to achieve ultra-low power and permanent preservation in a radically compressed form without the need to delete the exponentially increasing human data. Current silicon-based memory technology has limitations in stably and permanently storing and preserving the rapidly increasing data. This theme aims to develop a memory system capable of ultra-low power and permanent preservation of cold data, which accounts for 80-90% of the total, by utilizing the high storage density and permanent preservation characteristics of DNA.

The government will organize the budget for these projects in next year's budget under the supervision of the relevant ministries and promote them in the form of project teams led by project directors from private experts who oversee the entire project cycle. Flexible systems such as competitive R&D, reward-based post-payment R&D, technology acquisition, goal readjustment, and early termination will be applied. If technology verification is successfully completed during the 3-4 year project period for each theme, commercialization will also be pursued through separate follow-up projects.

Jung Min-hyung, head of the Innovation Challenge Project Promotion Team, said, "We have broadly reviewed proposals from government ministries and the research community to select and plan challenging themes based on high difficulty and mission orientation," adding, "We will continue to strive to discover themes that are essential for national R&D innovation, even if the possibility of failure is high."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.