In July final 12 months, Naver, maker of the search engine generally known as the “Google of South Korea,” opened its new second headquarters, Naver 1784. The constructing’s title refers to a 12 months generally related to the Industrial Revolution. Inside you’ll discover a testomony to automation’s rising international affect, within the type of 100 autonomous robots.
The robots, known as Rookies, weave out and in between folks and ship parcels, espresso and lunch to Naver’s staff, 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’s going to organize the robots in its new information heart, Gak Sejong, in South Korea.
Picture Credit: Naver
I visited the location final 12 months, to see the robots firsthand. Rookies navigate by each inch of the headquarters, whereas robotic arms drew footage. Naver already owns a raft of subsidiaries, providing providers like e-commerce, messaging, funds, digital comics, cloud and metaverse. And, simply final week, the corporate launched its generative AI providers constructed on its giant language mannequin HyperClova X, becoming a member of the generative AI house race.
Does the web large wish to broaden robotics, synthetic intelligence, and autonomous driving know-how 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 know-how and AI, through its R&D division since 2013. Six years in the past, it acquired Xerox Analysis Centre Europe (XRCE) in Grenoble, France, which makes a speciality of researching AI, machine studying, laptop imaginative and prescient and pure language processing, to bolster its analysis and growth. Put up-acquisition, XRCE grew to become Naver Labs.
The corporate believes folks dwelling in such modern environments will profit from the Naver Labs tasks — together with robots — within the not-too-distant future. The web search engine needs to participate within the new type of platform, robots, which it believes might substitute cellphones someday.
Naver Labs‘ analysis is aimed toward 5 areas: robotics (Round, Round G and Ambidex), AI (ARC System), digital twins (Alike and Hybrid HD mapping), laptop imaginative and prescient/augmented actuality (Indoor AR Navigation and Forward) and autonomous driving know-how.
At Naver’s AI convention final week, TechCrunch sat down with the director of Science at Naver Labs Europe (NLE), Martin Humenberger, to find out about Naver Labs’ mission and ongoing tasks.
“Our long-term imaginative and prescient is creating helpful robots in on a regular basis lives,” Humenberger tells TechCrunch. “This contains robotic assistants at house, hospitals, museums, purchasing malls, airports, and so on. Extra short-term, we concentrate on last-mile supply functions in good cities and buildings.”
Most of its long-term tasks haven’t been commercialized but. Nonetheless, its ongoing analysis and newest know-how are repeatedly utilized to enhance the efficiency of Naver’s robots, Rookies, on the 1784 constructing and the information heart, Gak. As well as, 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’s the robots’ eye and mind, which suggests Rookies don’t require GPS entry; as an alternative, the ARC eye helps them acknowledge their environment, whereas offering probably the most environment friendly route. That’s in keeping with Imaginative and prescient Group chief at Naver Labs Korea, Donghwan Lee, who leads the ARC eye challenge. ARC Mind, 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 because of 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 need to deal with to the cloud.
Picture Credit: Naver
Each Naver Labs in South Korea and France have some clear mutual objectives, however others run in parallel, says Humenberger. The collaboration relies on info and progress sharing till they outline joint goals.
Whereas Naver Labs Europe (NLE) focuses its analysis on “the basics of AI and overcome present and future challenges in AI,” Naver Labs Korea (NLK) researches and develops robotics, programs engineering and platform engineering and operations, he provides.
The first analysis space of NLE is the AI know-how for robotics. NLE is growing “laptop imaginative and prescient strategies for next-generation robotic notion,” which helps robots perceive the setting higher, and “new strategies for sequential determination making and combinational optimization, which allows the robots to navigate in unknown environments or to carry out complicated manipulation duties,” Humenberger explains. NLE can also be constructing a know-how that enables environment friendly interplay between robots and people through language.
Picture Credit: Naver Labs/ Martin Humenberger, director of Science at Naver Labs Europe
To make Naver’s robots versatile assistants, NLE advances AI-powered laptop imaginative and prescient, machine studying for robotics and pure language processes.
“It’s true that we depend lots on AI-powered laptop imaginative and prescient to raised perceive the world (semantics and geometry), reinforcement studying to show robots to execute duties, and pure language processing and data retrieval to make data (textual content, pictures, movies, and so on.) accessible to our robots,” Humenberger tells TechCrunch.
He offers an instance of a concrete analysis exercise associated to basis fashions for the actual world, CroCo. CroCo is a basis mannequin for 3D in a single picture. “It’s designed to grasp the world in 3D utilizing pictures,” Humenberger stated, including that it’s not for generative AI or giant language fashions however for robotics and digital twins. “At Naver Labs, we use CroCo as a sophisticated robotic notion module for duties resembling localization, navigation, and interplay between human and robotic.”
“We have now a large check mattress the place we will develop and function robots in the actual world, extremely expert engineers and researchers, and highly effective cloud infrastructure,” Humenberger explains. “It’s fairly tough to safe even one in all these situations, and it’s protected to say Naver is the only firm that’s outfitted 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 keeping with Humenberger. Naver Labs didn’t disclose the variety of workers in Korea attributable to confidentiality points.
South Korean tech behemoths, resembling Samsung, LG, Hyundai and Doosan, are working within the pipeline of robotics growth, 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 keeping with its submitting.
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