The Korean government selected twelve industries out of the five major fields such as autonomous vehicles in preparation for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and classified a robot industry as platform industry. Unlike general manufacturing, a robot industry is highly connected with other industries, which enables to create new business models and added-value through convergence with manufacturing, automotive, medical, education, marine and other industries.The Korean government enacted Intelligent Robots Development and Distribution Promotion Act in 2008 to support systematic R&D investment in intelligent robot to strengthen the Korean robot industry. Under the act, the Basic Plan for Intelligent Robot Development is to be established every five year. The first and second Basic Plans were established in 2009 and 2014, respectively, and various policies on robotics R&D, creating robot supply, training robot experts and supporting exports have been in effect to promote the robot industry in Korea.Korea’s robot industry has been continuously growing since 2008 when the act was legislated. The robot market has expanded 2.1 times in production, 7.7 times in export, and 2.7 times in employment compared to 2008. With respect to technology level, the robotics technology gap between Korea and developed countries has kept shrinking owing to continuous R&D investments, which resulted in the high competitiveness of Korea’s robotics technology, ranked 4th in the world following the U.S., Europe and Japan.Although the government’s R&D investment scale, and economic and technological performance of the robot industry have been increased, few studies have been conducted on performance of robot R&D investments. This is mainly due to the lack of overall awareness of the robot industry despite the continuous increase of demand for robots in related industries and government R&D expenditure. Furthermore, the second Basic Plan will be abolished in 2018, and it is required to establish future plans for government’s R&D directions and strategies through comprehensive analysis of performance of robot R&D investments.Going forward, this paper examines the government’s investment in robot R&D and its performance using the national R&D projects data from 2009 to October 2016, and suggests efficient R&D investment strategies and directions to establish a future Basic Plan for Intelligent Robot Development
