HanBin Lee
HanBin Lee ’14, a Mechanical Engineering graduate, was recently honored as one of eleven Penn State Alumni Achievement Award recipients. He is the first Korean person to receive the award, which recognizes alumni thirty-five years of age and younger for outstanding professional accomplishments.
Lee is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Seoul Robotics, a South Korea-based company that offers solutions for self-driving vehicles. The company uses patented 3D-sensing technology to move vehicles without human intervention or sensors on the vehicle.
While serving in the South Korean army from 2014 to 2016, Lee was introduced to Light Detection and Ranging, or lidar, which uses light pulses to accurately represent an environment. He founded an online artificial-intelligence study group, where he met the future co-founders of Seoul Robotics. Together, they developed a software system for self-driving cars that relies on data from lidar sensors.
Today, the business employs seventy people across four continents. Lee and his team work with more than 100 companies, including BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Volvo.