A Samsung Group subsidiary has developed a machine gun-toting and grenade-launching robot sentry called the SGR-A1 that detects intruders using cameras, and heat and motion sensors. The government has tested it at the demilitarized zone along the border with North Korea.

Despite such breakthroughs, catching up to competitors won’t be easy. South Korea ranks No. 4 in deployment of industrial robots worldwide. After Japan—the leader—watched its high-tech industries get slammed by Samsung, Apple, and Google, the country is now investing heavily to preserve its edge. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has assembled a task force to examine ways to triple the size of Japan’s robot industry to 2.4 trillion yen ($22.6 billion).

South Korea’s domestic robot market is heavily skewed to manufacturing bots that cater to the shipping and auto industries. The country also is home to some standouts in health-care robotics. Curexo, a medical equipment maker, sells Robodoc, which performs orthopedic surgeries. Scientists at Chonnam National University based in Gwangju published a paper in Nature last year detailing their research into microscopic nanobots that can be injected into a patient’s bloodstream to detect cancer cells and destroy them.

Colin Angle, chief executive officer and co-founder of Bedford (Mass.)-based iRobot, a maker of automated floor cleaners and defense robots, says he believes South Korea ranks just behind the U.S. in robotic innovation. Yet he adds that will mean little if companies can’t make commercially viable robots that global consumers want to buy. “Robots take huge amounts of capital,” he says.

Another sign South Korean robotics is gaining more respect: Late last year, Andy Rubin, who runs Google’s robot group and is a co-founder of Android, visited Kaist, a public research university in central South Korea, to check out Hubo, a humanoid robot that can play rock, paper, scissors. Oh Jun Ho, the robot’s developer and a professor in the mechanical engineering department, says Rubin stayed for two days “and took two Hubos with him when he left.”

David Fuller's view

Industrial robots, such as we see on automobile manufacturing lines are arguably the most commercially important to date.  However, we can expect to see many more robots of all shapes and sizes, performing an almost unimaginable variety of different tasks in the years ahead.  The main consequences of this technological surge are: 1) vastly increased efficiency and accuracy; 2) continued corporate growth which way outstrips national GDP growth; 3) creating positive deflation (more and higher quality products and services for lower costs but higher profits); 4) while often replacing people’s jobs more quickly than new jobs can be found.