Hyundai Heavy Industries Inks MOU on Robot Business with Naver Labs

The Robot Business Division of Hyundai Heavy Industries Holdings, the No. 1 robot company in Korea, has signed an MOU on the robot business with Naver Labs, a research and development corporation of Naver, the largest internet company in Korea.

The two companies announced on May 28 that they held an MOU ceremony, with the participation of Yoon Jung-keun, head of the Robot Business Division and Song Chang-hyun, CEO of Naver Labs, at Hyundai Building in Gyeongdong in Seoul.

Through this MOU, the two companies will join forces in the development and production of service robots. Hyundai Heavy Industries will take charge of production, sales, quality control, and development of service robots based on its capability to commercialize robots. Naver Labs will be in charge of technology research and development and the development of system and application software for robot production.

The two companies aim to commercialize two robots by the end of this year: One is the M1 robot that produces a three-dimensional indoor precision map while the other is the Around robot that can autonomously travel and offer services through positioning and route creation based on map cloud computing.

The M1 and Around robots, developed by Naver Labs, are loaded with a system through which the M1 shoots indoor space and stores precision maps in the cloud, and the Around autonomously travels based on the maps. In particular, it is expected that it will be possible to commercialize the two robots with one tenth of the cost to produce current autonomous mobile robots by realizing smooth autonomous driving and minimizing the use of expensive parts such as sensors.

Hyundai Heavy Industries Holdings plans to commercialize service robots for the first time in the industry by building a separate line at Daegu Robot Factory to mass-produce service robots and lowering prices a great deal. These robots are expected to be widely used at airports, large shopping malls, gas stations, hotels, large bookstores and factories.