In July final 12 months, Naver, maker of the search engine referred to as the “Google of South Korea,” opened its new second headquarters, Naver 1784. The constructing’s identify refers to a 12 months generally related to the Industrial Revolution. Inside you’ll discover a testomony to automation’s rising world affect, within the type of 100 autonomous robots.
The robots, referred to as Rookies, weave out and in between folks and ship parcels, espresso and lunch to Naver’s workers, all utilizing 5G. They even have their very own robots-only elevator, Roboport. Naver Labs, the corporate’s R&D division, launched utilizing the brand new headquarters as a check mattress for the Rookies. This November, it would organize the robots in its new information middle, Gak Sejong, in South Korea.
Image Credits: Naver
I visited the positioning final 12 months, to see the robots firsthand. Rookies navigate by means of each inch of the headquarters, whereas robotic arms drew photos. Naver already owns a raft of subsidiaries, providing companies like e-commerce, messaging, funds, digital comics, cloud and metaverse. And, simply final week, the corporate launched its generative AI companies constructed on its massive language mannequin HyperClova X, becoming a member of the generative AI house race.
Does the web big wish to broaden robotics, synthetic intelligence, and autonomous driving expertise past its present companies to drive its future development? When requested about its ongoing tasks, Naver says it has been engaged on a handful of tasks on robots, autonomous driving expertise and AI, through its R&D division since 2013. Six years in the past, it acquired Xerox Research Centre Europe (XRCE) in Grenoble, France, which makes a speciality of researching AI, machine studying, pc imaginative and prescient and pure language processing, to bolster its analysis and improvement. Post-acquisition, XRCE turned Naver Labs.
The firm believes folks residing in such modern environments will profit from the Naver Labs tasks — together with robots — within the not-too-distant future. The web search engine desires to participate within the new sort of platform, robots, which it believes might change cellphones sooner or later.
Naver Labs‘ analysis is aimed toward 5 areas: robotics (Around, Around G and Ambidex), AI (ARC System), digital twins (Alike and Hybrid HD mapping), pc imaginative and prescient/augmented actuality (Indoor AR Navigation and Ahead) and autonomous driving expertise.
At Naver’s AI convention final week, TechCrunch sat down with the director of Science at Naver Labs Europe (NLE), Martin Humenberger, to study Naver Labs’ mission and ongoing tasks.
“Our long-term vision is creating useful robots in everyday lives,” Humenberger tells TechCrunch. “This includes robot assistants at home, hospitals, museums, shopping malls, airports, etc. More short-term, we focus on last-mile delivery applications in smart cities and buildings.”
Most of its long-term tasks haven’t been commercialized but. Still, its ongoing analysis and newest expertise are repeatedly utilized to enhance the efficiency of Naver’s robots, Rookies, on the 1784 constructing and the info middle, Gak. In addition, it offers a robotic as a service (RaaS) to the Naver Cloud platform, Humenberger provides.
One instance of RaaS is the ARC system powered by the Naver Cloud Platform. ARC, an intelligence system for robots, allows Naver’s Rookies to see, acknowledge and function. ARC isn’t only a management system for robots. It is the robots’ eye and mind, which suggests Rookies don’t require GPS entry; as a substitute, the ARC eye helps them acknowledge their environment, whereas offering probably the most environment friendly route. That’s in accordance with Vision Group chief at Naver Labs Korea, Donghwan Lee, who leads the ARC eye mission. ARC Brain, in the meantime, connects service infrastructure in actual time and updates information and algorithms within the cloud for robots. Rookies on the 1784 constructing don’t want a built-in working system due to their cloud connectivity that powers the ARC system, which controls the robots, Lee added. Naver says the ARC system can scale back the robotic’s manufacturing value and battery consumption by shifting duties robots must deal with to the cloud.
Image Credits: Naver
Both Naver Labs in South Korea and France have some clear mutual objectives, however others run in parallel, says Humenberger. The collaboration relies on data and progress sharing till they outline joint aims.
While Naver Labs Europe (NLE) focuses its analysis on “the fundamentals of AI and how to overcome current and future challenges in AI,” Naver Labs Korea (NLK) researches and develops robotics, methods engineering and platform engineering and operations, he provides.
The main analysis space of NLE is the AI expertise for robotics. NLE is growing “computer vision methods for next-generation robot perception,” which helps robots perceive the surroundings higher, and “new methods for sequential decision making and combinational optimization, which enables the robots to navigate in unknown environments or to perform complex manipulation tasks,” Humenberger explains. NLE can also be constructing a expertise that enables environment friendly interplay between robots and people through language.
Image Credits: Naver Labs/ Martin Humenberger, director of Science at Naver Labs Europe
To make Naver’s robots versatile assistants, NLE advances AI-powered pc imaginative and prescient, machine studying for robotics and pure language processes.
“It is true that we count a lot on AI-powered computer vision to better understand the world (semantics and geometry), reinforcement learning to teach robots to execute tasks, and natural language processing and information retrieval to make knowledge (text, images, videos, etc.) accessible to our robots,” Humenberger tells TechCrunch.
He provides an instance of a concrete analysis exercise associated to basis fashions for the true world, CroCo. CroCo is a basis mannequin for 3D in a single picture. “It is designed to understand the world in 3D using images,” Humenberger stated, including that it’s not for generative AI or massive language fashions however for robotics and digital twins. “At Naver Labs, we use CroCo as an advanced robot perception module for tasks such as localization, navigation, and interaction between human and robot.”
“We have a massive test bed where we can develop and operate robots in the real world, highly skilled engineers and researchers, and powerful cloud infrastructure,” Humenberger explains. “It is quite difficult to secure even one of these conditions, and it is safe to say Naver is the sole company that is equipped with all of them.”
NLE has greater than 100 researchers and scientists within the fields of AI, starting from core machine studying to UX, in accordance with Humenberger. Naver Labs didn’t disclose the variety of employees in Korea because of confidentiality points.
South Korean tech behemoths, equivalent to Samsung, LG, Hyundai and Doosan, are working within the pipeline of robotics improvement, from industrial robots to cooking, serving, and supply robots, and ploughing capital into the robotics house. Earlier this 12 months, Samsung stated it plans to roll out an EX1 robotic to help elders in exercising, and its analysis division is growing a Samsung robotic platform. Doosan Robotics, a robotics unit of the Korean manufacturing agency Doosan, has filed for an preliminary public providing, in accordance with its submitting.
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