ROBOne: AI-powered sorting robotics
Client: ROBOne (acquired by Korea Zinc, 2024) Year: 2023 Services: Interactive 3D Product Showcase + Marketing Website Duration: 12 weeks total (3D app + web build in parallel) Tech: Three.js + Verge3D (3D app); WordPress + Elementor (web); bilingual EN/KO
The problem
ROBOne makes AI-powered waste-sorting robotics. A category that didn't really exist a decade ago and now occupies a specific niche in industrial recycling, municipal waste management, and circular-economy infrastructure. The technology combines computer vision, robotic actuation, and material-specific sorting logic into a single production system.
Their challenge was twofold: marketing to industrial distributors and waste-management operators who needed to understand the hardware, and a larger narrative challenge of positioning the company credibly in the sustainability / AI-industrial convergence.
The request: a 3D interactive showcase of the sorting hardware for distributor sales, plus a corporate marketing site that made the AI-and-robotics story legible to both industrial buyers and broader stakeholders.
What we built
1. Interactive 3D product showcase
A browser-based 3D tour of the sorting robotics system. Sensors, robotic actuator, sorting belt, material-specific output bays. Visitors could orbit, zoom, and see the sorting cycle demonstrated as an animated sequence.
2. Marketing site
Bilingual Korean/English marketing site covering the company, technology, products, case studies, careers, and news. Built on WordPress with Elementor for in-house post-launch editing.
- 3D-vision product narrative. Threaded through the technology pages as well as the product pages
- Service/maintenance portal. Distributor-facing resource for post-sale support
- YouTube integration. Video content from product demonstrations and industry talks
- Bilingual delivery. Korean primary for local market, English for international distributor network
- ESG framing. Sustainability narrative threaded through the site without overclaiming
Why this case matters
ROBOne was acquired by Korea Zinc in 2024, meaning the work we shipped is the digital footprint of a company that went from independent scale-up to a division of one of Korea's largest industrial conglomerates. The acquisition validates that the positioning we helped build (technically credible, industrially serious, sustainability-aligned) worked in exactly the market it was built for.
It's also the strongest thematic match in our web portfolio for "AI + industrial", the category the broader industry is moving toward. We shipped the site in 2023, before "AI-powered" became the ambient claim of 2025-26, and the credibility holds up precisely because it was grounded in the specific technology rather than attached as marketing language.
What we learned
Acquisition-readiness is a silent deliverable. We didn't build the ROBOne site with acquisition in mind. The discipline we brought (clear technology story, honest capability claims, structured case studies, bilingual delivery) are exactly the things that due-diligence reads well. If a site could get an industrial scale-up through Korea Zinc's diligence, it's a site that was built to the right bar.
"AI" as marketing term ages poorly; "AI + specific technology" ages well. The ROBOne site says "AI-powered computer-vision sorting" with specific technical anchors. It doesn't say "AI-native," "AI-first," or any of the 2024-26 era claims that sound hollow twelve months later. Specificity beats language trends.
Service/maintenance portals are underrated. The distributor-facing service portal was a small feature on launch and became one of the site's most-used areas post-deployment. Industrial buyers think about service availability before they think about product features. Designing the site to surface that credibility turned out to be one of the highest-impact decisions we made.
Stack
3D showcase
- Runtime: Three.js + Verge3D
- Assets: GLTF with Draco compression
- UI: HTML/CSS overlays, bilingual text
Website
- Framework: WordPress with Elementor (client requirement for internal post-launch editing)
- Languages: Korean + English via WPML
- Hosting: client-managed Korean hosting
- Performance: LCP under 2.5s on 4G, full-page AMP-adjacent optimization
Want something similar?
If you're building a complex industrial or AI-industrial product that needs both a browser-based 3D showcase and a technically-credible marketing site, the ROBOne pattern is the most directly applicable case in our portfolio.
Send a two-sentence email to hello@cclemang.com.
