[Agtech Rising] Sungho SI Corporation CEO Park Sung-ho, a former classical vocalist, targets global agriculture with ‘EVE Clever’

In a greenhouse in Baekgu-myeon, home to the Smart Farm Innovation Valley in Gimje, Jeonbuk State, robots managed and harvested 3,000 strawberry plants during the 2025–2026 crop season. The strawberries were sold at NongHyup Hanaro Mart, Coupang, and Naver Smart Store. The company responsible for everything from cultivation to sales was robotics firm Sungho SI Corporation Co., Ltd. CEO Park Sung-ho is a farmer who registered as an agricultural business entity in 2024 and a member of Baekgu Agricultural Cooperative.

CEO Park emphasized, “We are making robots for farming; we are not farming for robots,” adding, “These robots were created to farm better and raise income, so we must not put the cart before the horse.”
 

From soloist at the Giessen Theater in Germany to smart-farm entrepreneur

Park is an opera singer who majored in music. He studied in Germany for eight years and worked as a soloist at the Giessen Municipal Theater in the state of Hesse. After returning to Korea, he taught students in the Department of Music Education at Kongju National University’s College of Education. His entry into agriculture began with a dream of owning a traditional Korean hanok house. Park recalled, “If you complete a return-to-farming and rural-resettlement program, you can receive substantial government support when building a hanok, so I began taking the training,” adding, “My wife and I took about 300 hours of smart-farm education alone.”

He later served as chief marketing officer (CMO) at an integrated environmental control company and oversaw the development of a biometric information system at a Seoul National University venture company. In a KRW 7.6 billion multi-ministry smart-farm package project, he was responsible for a biometric information system using a phenomics analysis camera. When contactless approaches became the mainstream during the project because of COVID-19, he decided to apply video data to robotics, and in October 2020 he founded Sungho SI Corporation. Park explained, “With the idea of processing the backbone data needed for robots with AI, we trained the system on 800,000 crop images.”
 

‘EVE Clever,’ an agricultural work-management robot, not just a harvester

The flagship product, “EVE Clever,” drives through greenhouses with a depth-recognition camera and analyzes crops. When a deep-learning algorithm determines the ripeness of fruit, a three-finger gripper made of silicone harvests it. While working, it also measures growth indicators such as the size of leaves, crowns, flower clusters, and fruit, and detects factors that hinder growth, including diseases and pests.

Park said, “Many people only look at whether the robot picks well or not, but our purpose is to know what growth condition the crop is in,” adding, “It is a Physical AI robot that manages every cycle of agriculture, from pollination to pruning and harvesting.”

According to the company brochure, the indoor model recorded a harvest success rate of more than 90% for strawberries, tomatoes, paprika, and melons, and one unit replaces the work of more than two workers. The Korea Institute for Robot Industry Advancement and the Korea Institute of Machinery & Materials are conducting performance evaluations using indicators such as an 80% harvest success rate, 90% recognition accuracy, and a crop damage rate of less than 5%.

EVE Clever is priced at $48,570, and its procurement price is listed with the Public Procurement Service at KRW 68 million. Monthly rentals are also offered under a robot-as-a-service (RaaS) model. Excluding value-added tax, the monthly rental fee is $1,790 for a 36-month contract (about KRW 2.47 million, based on the basic exchange rate as of September 21, 2026) and $1,160 for a 60-month contract (about KRW 1.6 million). When the contract ends, customers can own the robot by paying about 10% of the procurement price as the buyout price.
 

Expanding the lineup to open-field and humanoid models

The new product “EVE Clever Outdoor” is a model targeting apple, pear, peach, grape, and citrus orchards. Users can choose between a wheeled type and a crawler type, and its dustproof and waterproof rating is IP65. By adding real-time kinematic (RTK) correction to the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and combining it with LiDAR, the company reduced positioning error to about ±5 cm. Park said, “The crawler type was designed to climb slopes of up to 30 degrees,” adding, “After completing demonstrations in Pyeongtaek and Yeongju, we plan to officially launch it in January 2027.” Sungho SI Corporation said it has also completed proof-of-concept testing for the dual-arm humanoid model “SUNGHO-RS-H” and is considering launching it as early as the second half of 2027.

The growth-measurement system “EVE” combines RGB, depth, and thermal-imaging cameras with the YOLOv11 model to distinguish fruit, stems, leaves, and flowers in real time. The container-type vertical farm “Space-ONE” is a product equipped with four-tier cultivation racks and integrated environmental control in a 40-foot container (floor area of about 30 square meters), and its power consumption is about 3,900 kWh per month. Park explained, “This is a product for which we continue to receive quotation requests from Indonesia and Saudi Arabia,” adding, “In a single container of just over 10 pyeong, production worth KRW 100 million per crop season is possible based on mushrooms.”
 

Proving “commercialization” through certification, procurement, and demonstrations

EVE Clever is registered on the Public Procurement Service’s Venture Nara platform. The company explained that EVE Clever is the only agricultural harvesting robot registered on Venture Nara. Sungho SI Corporation has secured three registered patents and four software copyrights, and it has completed designation as a new-technology agricultural machine. New Technology (NET) certification has only the on-site evaluation remaining, and for international certifications it is pursuing European Union (EU) CE certification and U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) certification.

Domestic demonstrations are also getting underway in earnest. As Pyeongtaek City in Gyeonggi Province has been confirmed as a site for the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy’s AI demonstration project, Sungho SI Corporation will verify autonomous pear harvesting by the end of 2026. It is also pursuing an apple-orchard demonstration with Yeongju City in North Gyeongsang Province. Park said, “The scale of farm demonstrations through the two local governments is about KRW 1 billion.”
 

U.S. subsidiary and exports to North Macedonia…expanding the overseas stage

Sungho SI Corporation participated in major IT exhibitions such as CES, MWC, IFA, and GITEX in 2025. Under an export contract signed with North Macedonia’s N99 Technologies, it will deliver products in November 2026. Park explained, “Our North Macedonian partner will effectively serve as a branch office and target Islamic markets such as Türkiye and Saudi Arabia as well as the EU market.” The company signed a memorandum of understanding worth $100,000 with Japan’s SANX Information System.

It will enter the North American market directly. With its tenancy at the Korea SMEs and Startups Agency’s Global Business Center (GBC) in Washington, D.C., confirmed, the establishment of a U.S. subsidiary has also been confirmed. In October, it will discuss local demonstrations with the City of Bakersfield, California, and the University of California, Riverside (UC Riverside). Park said, “Our goal is to use California as a localization hub for a major citrus-producing region and release a ‘Made in USA’ EVE Clever within five years.” In Alberta, Canada, the company has received and is discussing a proposal to introduce Physical AI for grain production.
 

Engineers complete three-month field internships…aiming for “a price range at which farmers can buy one walking tractor”

Engineers at Sungho SI Corporation spend three months as interns in agricultural fields after joining the company. Park said, “You have to squat down yourself to know what posture is best for harvesting and where to look from to obtain the most objective data,” adding, “Only when you know the posture in which a person harvests comfortably can a robot also properly identify crops from that position.”

The remaining challenge is price. Park said, “Once we enter the mass-production stage, we should be able to lower the robot’s price,” adding, “The ideal would be to meet a price range at which farms can buy one walking tractor.” He added, “Fruit growers find pruning more difficult than harvesting, and we heard responses that if a robot could at least reduce that labor burden, it would be truly necessary,” adding, “We are staking everything on the Yeongju demonstration.”