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New wireless charging device developed
The On-line Electric Vehicle (OLEV) developed by KAIST has made a step towards commercialization with the development of a more economic wireless charging device.
Professor Chun-Taek Rim from the Department of Nuclear and Quantum Engineering at KAIST has developed a new I-shaped wireless charging device that differs from the pre-existing rail-type electricity feeder. This device can be modularly produced and requires relatively less construction, significantly reducing the cost of implementation.
The KAIST OLEV is a new concept electric car that has a special electricity collecting device underneath it. The car’s battery is charged by magnetic fields produced from electric lines buried 15cm underneath the road. The vehicle was first tested in 2009, making it the first wireless electric car in the world. OLEV can be charged during stoppage time between traffic lights and receives real-time power when running. OLEV is currently in operation at the KAIST Munji Campus in Daejeon and is also being exhibited at the Yeosu Expo and Seoul Grand Park.
The device itself has a charging capacity of 15kW, and the electricity is supplied through an electricity feeder with a width of 80cm with a space interval of 20cm. Despite being hailed as a technological breakthrough and revolutionary concept, KAIST OLEV has been criticized for problems in commercialization, due to the difficulties in installing wires beneath existing roads, which costs a considerable amount of money.
The new I-shaped wireless charging device reduces the width of the electricity feeder by 10cm, a mere one-eighth of the size of the previous version, and greatly increases the charging power to 25kW. Furthermore, the left and right permissible space of automobiles has increased to 24cm and the magnetic field complies with the international design guidelines, making the OLEV safe for the human body.
The reduction of the width has made the mass production of modules possible, making the installation of KAIST OLEV more economical and marketable. Professor Rim emphasized that compared with the existing rail-type electricity feeder, the new technology will need only one-tenth of the construction time and 80% of the cost, significantly improving OLEV’s constructability and workability.
The research was published in the IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics last December, and Professor Rim was invited to talk at the Conference on Electric Roads & Vehicles, which was held in February in the United States, about the new technology.
2012.07.06 View 13697 -
KAIST College of Business ranks no.1 in Asia for executive education
KAIST College of Business ranked 28th in the world and 1st in Asia in the UK Financial Times (FT) 2012 Executive Education open ranking, making it the only school in Korea to be included.
The FT ranking selects the world’s top 65 business graduate schools based on executive education course design, teaching methods & materials, faculty, new skills & learning, quality of participants, and several other criteria. Last year, the KAIST executive education program ranked 29th in the world and 2nd in Asia. This year, it surpassed China’s CEIBS to rank 1st in Asia and has now been included in the ranking for three consecutive years.
Looking at the individual criteria, KAIST ranked highly in course preparation (11th), international location (11th), facilities (12th), and follow-up (5th) and saw increases in aims achieved (31st) and course design (29th).
KAIST attributed its success to the differentiation and specialization of education courses based on position, industry, and enterprise. KAIST College of Business operates an integrative course that fuses business management with science & technology, information media, medicine and innovation. The school runs both a chief and junior executive program to cater to different positional needs and provides specialized lectures that consider a company’s industry and size.
The ‘international location’ criteria saw a huge leap from 23rd to 11th due to the use of both long term and short term overseas exchange programs. The ‘Global Leader’ course created in 2011 is taught only in English and allows students to study abroad in a partner school in the second semester. The college’s knowhow in the MBA program also achieved recognition with high rankings in new skills & learning (18th) as well as in teaching methods & materials (24th).
College of Business President Lee Byung Tae said that the school’s success was achieved through a specialized curriculum that considers the market and explained that the ranking reflects the school’s competitiveness. He also said that KAIST will continue to provide the best educational services appropriate for KAIST’s outstanding reputation.
In the overall ranking, Swiss IMD was ranked number 1, followed by the Harvard Business School. In Asia, China’s CEIBS (29th), Singapore’s Aalto University (42nd), and the National University of Singapore Business School (64th) followed suit.
2012.05.17 View 11586
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Wireless electric trams at Seoul Amusement Park begin full operations.
Photo by Hyung-Joon Jun
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wireless electric trams at Seoul Amusement Park begin full operations.
KAIST’s On-Line Electric Vehicle (OLEV) becomes an icon of green technology, particularly for young students who aspire to transform their nation into the “vanguard of sustainability.”
Seoul, South Korea, July 19, 2011—As young students wrap up their school work before summer vacation in late July, Seoul Grand Park, an amusement park located south of Seoul, is busily preparing to accommodate throngs of summer visitors. Among the park’s routine preparations, however, there is something new to introduce to guests this summer: three wireless electric trams have replaced the old diesel-powered carts used by passengers for transportation within the park.
The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and the city of Seoul held a ceremony this morning, July 19, 2011, to celebrate their joint efforts to adopt a green public transportation system and presented park visitors with the three On-Line Electric Vehicles (OLEVs), which will be operated immediately thereafter. Approximately one hundred people, including science high school students across the nation, attended the ceremony and had a chance to ride the trams.
KAIST unveiled the prototype of an electric tram to the public in March 2010, and since then it has developed three commercial trams. The Korean government and the institute have worked on legal issues to embark on the full-scale commercialization of OLEV, and the long awaited approval from the government on such issues as standardization of the OLEV technology and road infrastructure, regulation of electromagnetic fields and electricity safety, and license and permits for vehicle eligibility, finally came through.
The On-Line Electric Vehicle (OLEV) is no ordinary electric car in that it is remotely charged via electromagnetic fields created by electric cables buried beneath the road. Unlike other currently available electric cars, OLEV can travel unlimited distances without having to stop to recharge. OLEV also has a small battery onboard, which enables the vehicle to travel on roads that are not equipped with underground power cables. This battery, however, is only one-fifth of the size of a conventional electric vehicle battery, resulting in considerable savings in the cost, size, and weight of the vehicle.
The OLEV project was initiated in 2009 as a method of resolving the battery problems of electric cars in a creative and disruptive way. KAIST came up with the idea of supplying electricity directly to the cars instead of depending solely on the onboard battery for power. Since then, the university has developed core technologies related to OLEV such as the “Shaped Magnetic Field in Resonance (SMFIR),” which enables an electric car to collect the magnetic fields and convert them into electricity, and the “Segment Technology,” which controls the flow of electromagnetic waves through an automatic power-on/shut-down system, thereby eliminating accidental exposure of the electromagnetic waves to pedestrians or non-OLEV cars.
According to KAIST, three types of OLEV have been developed thus far: electric buses, trams, and sport utility vehicles (SUVs). The technical specifications of the most recently developed OLEV (an electric bus), the OLEV research team at the university said, are as follows:
· Power cables are buried 15cm beneath the road surface.
· On average, over 80% power transmission efficiency is achieved.
· The distance gap between the road surface and the underbody of the vehicle is 20cm.
· The OLEV bus has a maximum electricity pickup capacity of 100kW.
· The OLEV bus complies with international standards for electromagnetic fields (below 24.1 mG).
The eco-friendly electric trams at Seoul Grand Park consume no fossil fuels and do not require any overhead wires or cables. Out of the total circular driving route (2.2km), only 16% of the road, 372.5m, has the embedded power lines, indicating that OLEV does not require extensive reconstruction of the road infrastructure. The city government of Seoul signed a memorandum of understanding with KAIST in 2009 as part of its initiatives to curtail emissions from public transportation and provide cleaner air to its citizens. Both parties plan to expand such collaboration to other transportation systems including buses in the future.
KAIST expects the OLEV technology to be applied in industries ranging from transportation to electronics, aviation, maritime transportation, robotics, and leisure. There are several ongoing international collaborative projects to utilize the OLEV technology for a variety of transportation needs, such as inner city commute systems (bus and trolley) and airport shuttle buses, in nations including Malaysia, US, Germany, and Denmark.
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More information about KAIST’s On-Line Electric Vehicle can be found at http://olev.co.kr/en/index.php. For any inquiries, please contact Lan Yoon at 82-42-350-2295 (cell: 82-10-2539-4303) or by email at hlyoon@kaist.ac.kr.
2011.07.22 View 17528 -
A KAIST student earns 500 million won with "Virtual Finger" idea.
A student’s small idea was transformed into a viable technology, yielding 500 million won through the technology transfer.
In a mobile environment, it is difficult to hold the device and use its multi touch function, at the same time. A doctorate candidate of the KAIST Cultural Technology Graduate School, Hwang Sung Jae (28 years old), identified the inconvenience that it is hard to see the full screen of a mobile phone while manipulating it, and he invented a helper called “Virtual Thumb.”
The thumb allows a user to use only one finger to perform tasks that require the movements of several fingers like punching, zooming in/out and rotating the screen. When the user touches a screen, a virtual finger is created on the other side of the screen and mimics the motion of the user’s touching.
The ‘virtual Finger’ technology is based on the idea that came in second in the 2009 Korea Invention Patent Competition hosted by the Korea Intellectual Property Office and can be applied to any device that has a touch-based system which spans from a TV remote controller to a Tablet PC’s.
The Office of University and Industry Cooperation, KAIST, facilitated to turn Hwang’s idea into commercialization, and on October 18, Victronix, a Korean mobile phone manufacturer, bought a patent right for the technology at 500 million won.
2010.12.13 View 11414 -
KAIST President Suh Honored with 2009 ASME Medal
KAIST President Nam-Pyo Suh has chosen as the 2009 winner of the ASME Medal presented by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, university authorities said on Thursday (July 2).
President Suh received the honor for "seminal contributions to the advancement of engineering through research in tribology, polymer processing, metal processing, design and manufacturing, as well as contributions to engineering education and research infrastructure."
The selection of President Suh was unanimously approved by the 13-member Board of Governors of the ASME. Suh became the first scientist of Asian descent in the award"s 89-year-long history.
Founded in 1880, the ASME is a non-profit professional organization promoting the art, science and practice of mechanical and multidisciplinary engineering and allied sciences. The organization is known for setting codes and standards for mechanical devices. As of 2009, it has 120,000 members worldwide.
Only one ASME medal is awarded annually to recognize "eminently distinguished achievement." The award consists of a $17,000 honorarium, a gold medal, certificate and travel supplement for two days. It will be presented to President Suh during the 2009 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, which will be held in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, November 13-10, 2009.
President Suh is an internationally known educator, engineer and inventor. Born in Korea, he immigrated to the U.S. in 1954 to join his father, who was teaching at Harvard. He earned both his bachelor"s and master"s degrees from MIT before coming to Carnegie Tech for his doctoral education in mechanical engineering.
While teaching at MIT, he founded the MIT-Industry Polymer Processing Program in 1973 and the Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productivity. He left these positions in 1984 to serve with the U.S. National Science Foundation as its assistant director for engineering, until 1988.
He invented many new materials, products and manufacturing processes, earning more than 60 U. S. patents and founding several companies. He has written seven books and more than 300 scholarly papers. Among dozens of honors throughout his career, President Suh most recently received the 2007 Lifetime Achievement from the Society of Plastics Engineers.
The ASME conducts one of the world"s largest technical publishing operations through its ASME Press, holds numerous technical conferences and hundreds of professional development courses each year, and sponsors numerous outreach and educational programs.
2009.07.02 View 16762 -
Int'l Herald Tribune Carries Feature Story on KAIST
International Herald Tribune carried a feature story on KAIST"s ongoing reform efforts on the front page of its Jan. 19-20 edition. The following is the full text of the report.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/18/asia/school.php
South Korean science prepares to take on the world
By Choe Sang-Hun
Friday, January 18, 2008
DAEJEON, South Korea: In Professor Cho Dong Ho"s laboratory at Kaist, South Korea"s top science and technology university, researchers are trying to develop technology that could let you fold a notebook-size electronic display and carry it in your pocket like a handkerchief.
It"s too early to say when something like this might be commercially available. But the experiment has already achieved one important breakthrough: it has mobilized professors from eight departments to collaborate on an idea proposed by a student.
This arrangement is almost unheard of in South Korea, where the norm is for a senior professor to dictate research projects to his own cloistered team. But it"s only one change afoot at this government-financed university, which has ambitions to transform the culture of South Korean science, and more.
"When we first got the student"s idea on what a future display should look like, we thought it was crazy, stuff from science fiction," said Cho, director of Kaist"s Institute for Information Technology Convergence. "But under our new president, we are being urged to try things no one else is likely to."
That university president is Suh Nam Pyo, 71, a mechanical engineer who used to be an administrator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and who is spearheading closely watched changes that are expected to have ramifications far beyond this campus 90 minutes by car south of Seoul.
His moves so far, from requiring professors to teach in English to basing student admissions on factors other than test scores, are aimed at making the university, and by extension South Korean society, much more competitive on a world scale.
When the South Korean government hired Suh in 2006 to shake up the state-financed Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (which formally changed its name to its acronym, Kaist, on Jan. 1) the country"s leading schools faced a crisis. The old system, which guaranteed free tuition to lure promising students into science and technology, the drivers of South Korea"s industrial growth, was no longer working as well as it used to.
Prosperity was allowing those young people to choose fields of study once viewed as luxuries, like literature and history. Worse, increasing numbers were choosing to study abroad, mostly in the United States, and then not returning home. The fear was that South Korean institutions and enterprises would be gutted of expertise.
That concern was voiced at a news conference Monday by the president-elect, Lee Myung Bak, who said the educational system "isn"t producing talent that can compete globally."
Kaist, which was established in 1971 with foreign aid, has a special place in South Korean education. The military strongman Park Chung Hee recruited the brightest young people to train there as scientists and engineers. Villagers put up a large banner to celebrate whenever a local child was admitted.
"When I was a student here in the mid-1980s, some students stopped before the national flag at the library in the morning and observed a moment of silence, vowing to dedicate ourselves to the nation"s industrial development," said Cho Byung Jin, a professor of electrical engineering.
Since his arrival, Suh has become the most talked-about campus reformer in South Korea by taking on some of Kaist"s most hallowed traditions.
In a first for a Korean university, Suh has insisted that all classes eventually be taught in English, starting with those aimed at freshmen.
"I want Kaist students to work all over the world," Suh said last week. "I don"t want them to be like other Koreans who attend international conferences and have a lunch among themselves because they are afraid of speaking in English."
The move to English supports another of his changes: opening undergraduate degree programs to talented non-Koreans. Last year Kaist filled 51 of its 700 admission slots with foreign students on full scholarships. Meanwhile, he has ended free tuition for all; any student whose grade average falls below a B must pay up to $16,000 a year.
"My dream is to make Kaist a globalized university, one of the best universities in the world," he said.
In what may have been his most daring move, the university denied tenure to 15 of the 35 professors who applied last September. Until then, few if any applicants had failed tenure review in the university"s 36-year history.
In this education-obsessed country, Suh"s actions have been watched intensely for their broader impact. More than 82 percent of all high school graduates go on to higher education. What university a South Korean attends in his 20s can determine his position and salary in his 50s, a factor behind recent expos?of prominent South Koreans who faked prestigious diplomas.
The system is widely deplored but seldom challenged. From kindergarten, a child"s life is shaped largely by a single goal: doing well in examinations, particularly the all-important national college entrance exam. High school students plod through rote learning from dawn to dusk. Tutoring by "exam doctors" is a multibillion-dollar industry. During vacations, students attend private cram schools, which numbered 33,000 in 2006.
One result is a disciplined and conformist work force, an advantage when South Korea rapidly industrialized by copying technology from others. But now, with the country trying to climb the innovation ladder, the rigid school system is proving a stumbling block.
The nation"s highly hierarchical ways are often cited to explain how Hwang Woo Suk, the disgraced South Korean scientist who claimed he had produced stems cells from a cloned human embryo, could fabricate research findings with the complicity of junior associates.
The ambitious head overseas. Last year, 62,392 South Korean students were enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities, making them the third-largest foreign student group, after Indians (83,833) and Chinese (67,723), according to the U.S. Institute of International Education.
Some start earlier. About 35,000 South Korean children below college age go abroad each year, most to the United States to learn English.
Against this backdrop, Kaist has been experimenting with test-free admissions. For this year"s class, it brought applicants in for interviews and debates and make presentations while professors looked for creativity and leadership.
"About 20 percent of the students who formerly would have won admission didn"t make it under our new guidelines," Suh said. "We are looking for rough diamonds."
Challenging the status quo can be risky.
The Science and Technology Ministry, which oversees Kaist, had first looked outside South Korea for someone to lead the changes, choosing the Nobel physics laureate Robert Laughlin, who became the first foreigner to head a South Korean university in 2004. But he returned to Stanford University within two years, after the faculty rebelled against him for attempting some of the same changes Suh has instituted, accusing him, among other things, of insensitivity to Korean ways.
Suh"s Korean roots and experience shield him from such charges. He did not emigrate to the United States until he was 18 and has worked at Korean universities as well as serving as assistant director at the U.S. National Science Foundation in the 1980s and head of MIT"s department of mechanical engineering from 1991 to 2001.
"Reform entails sacrifices, but even if we don"t reform, there will be sacrifices," Suh said. "The difference is that if we don"t reform and don"t encourage competition, it"s the best people who are sacrificed."
So far, Suh"s innovations have mostly received favorable reviews.
Education Minister Kim Shi Il called them a "very desirable way of making Korea"s universities more competitive globally." The newspaper JoongAng Daily (which publishes an English-language version in partnership with the IHT) praised him for "smashing the iron rice bowls" (ending guaranteed job security) for professors and said, "We must learn from Kaist."
Ewan Stewart, a British physicist who has taught at Kaist since 1999, said, "Many of the things President Suh is saying were things I felt should have been said a long time ago."
Chung Joo Yeon, a first-year student, said she accepted the need for classes in English, but complained that some professors had no experience teaching in the language.
But Cho, the electrical engineering professor, said: "It"s no longer a matter of choice. If we want to maintain our school"s standards, we must draw talents from countries around the world, and that means we must conduct our classes in English."
Meanwhile, Lee has promised that as president he will give universities more autonomy by taking the "government"s hands off" how they select their students.
2008.01.23 View 19355