Identifying Core Robot Technologies by Analyzing Patent Co-classification Information

This study suggests a new approach for identifying core robot tech-nologies based on technological cross-impact. Specifically, the approach applies data mining techniques and multi-criteria decision-making methods to the co-classification information of registered patents on the robots. First, a cross-impact matrix is constructed with the confidence values by applying association rule mining (ARM) to the co-classification information of patents. Analytic network process (ANP) is applied to the co-classification frequency matrix for deriving weights of each robot technology. Then, a technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) is employed to the derived cross-impact matrix and weights for identifying core robot technologies from the overall cross-impact perspective. It is expected that the proposed approach could help robot technology managers to formulate strategy and policy for technology planning of robot area.