GOLE ROBOTICS Reduces Production Costs and Eliminates Errors

Dongmin Lee and Hosik Chae established start-up Gole Robotics in 2023 to develop autonomous construction technologies that integrate cutting-edge robotics and modern technologies. Just three months after Lee and Chae incorporated Gole in Seoul, the company’s first robotic module won an Innovation Award at the 2024 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Gole’s groundbreaking flagship product, an innovative robotic lifting scaffolding device for automating material transport, tackles labor-intensive challenges on construction sites. Automatically lifting heavy materials eliminates physical strain on workers, optimizes productivity, and expedites project completion.

Accelerated development was crucial to the start-up’s success. Gole’s founders chose to combine SOLIDWORKS® with the powerful collaboration capabilities of the cloud-based 3DEXPERIENCE® Works solutions, which CTO Chae had used extensively at a leading research lab. CEO Lee notes, “While there are many 3D design platforms, 3DEXPERIENCE is the most actively used in the field of robotics.”

By integrating SOLIDWORKS with 3DEXPERIENCE Works solutions, Gole advances its robot design and manufacturing processes with seamless collaboration across hardware, software, and electrical engineering teams by organically connecting them through the cloud.

Such efficiencies enabled the company to successfully design and manufacture its autonomous driving robot module in just 2-1⁄2 months. “SOLIDWORKS is considered the ‘language’ for Gole Robotics, and the 3DEXPERIENCE platform is the meeting place where all decisin-making, including design and structure, is carried out,” Lee points out. Further, the 3DEXPERIENCE platform streamlines order placement and procurement through basic structural calculations and bill of materials (BOM) creation.  

Using 3DEXPERIENCE Works and SOLIDWORKS simulation tools, Gole was not only able to produce a robot with no errors and no failures during testing but also reduced robot weight by 20 percent.

“It was especially convenient to easily simulate the mechanical logics and robot performance … we utilized SOLIDWORKS structural analysis to streamline the structure, and, through activities such as weight reduction, successfully achieved a 20 percent reduction in overall weight. As a result, we were able to decrease the output of the drive system components, including motors and drivers, leading to reduction in the robot’s production cost of more than 10 percent,” Lee recounts.

The cloud-based 3DEXPERIENCE platform unified and shortened countless decision-making processes among Gole’s mechanical, software, and electrical engineering specialists involved in collaborating and assembling a robot from hundreds or thousands of components.

Lee concludes, “Our goal is to swiftly produce a robot that can be commercially applied in construction sites within a very short time frame, prioritizing speed as our primary challenge. Therefore, the remarkable collaboration tools within SOLIDWORKS and 3DEXPERIENCE Works solutions are deemed essential for our needs because our organization believes that decision-making should be consolidated on a single platform. Our decisions and judgments, and both failures and successes, were meticulously managed through revision control. This aided in making informed decisions and allowed for streamlined decision-making processes.”