Google Holds Cloud Summit in Seoul
Google is pushing for participation in smart town projects in cooperation with LG Electronics.
Google held a Google Cloud Summit at COEX on Oct. 25 and announced that it will work with LG Electronics to participate in future smart town projects, which involve construction of residential complexes as well as international business facilities such as offices, commercial facilities and hotels.
Both companies have decided to work with private real estate development companies to create intelligent urban spaces using IoT, big data, and AI technologies for their upcoming smart city projects. Specific areas have not been disclosed and it is planning to increase the number of business partners in the future. Previously, Google and LG Electronics expressed interest in investing in the global G City project in Cheongra, Incheon.
"The two companies’ push for smart town projects is still in its early stage and we have not yet decided the areas and sizes of the projects," said Lee In-jong, a Google vice president for cloud IoT. “We will participate in smart home and smart town projects in cooperation with property development companies and financial partners.”
To give an idea of the type of a smart town promoted by the two companies, Lee said, "In the smart town we will build, for instance, if traffic cameras find a child crossing the street, the central control system will give additional signal time to the intersection to ensure that the child crosses the street safely," Lee said.
At the individual building level, energy efficiency can be improved by using energy monitoring, lighting, and temperature control. At a smart home, technologies such as Google Assistant and Nest that are integrated into Google Cloud IoT cores will make home devices interact with each other more closely.
Users can talk to home appliances to find out what went wrong and to schedule a repair without having to call various places.
"LG Electronics has strengths in smart products, while Google is strong in AI and machine learning," Lee said. “Together, we will be able to solve problems of large cities and generate positive changes in daily lives of people.”
The Cloud Summit held by Google is an official event intended to share the latest updates of Google Cloud with developers and users. It was held in Seoul for the first time. Some expected Google to announce its plan to establish a data center in South Korea at the meeting, but there was no announcement.
"Google has strengths in AI and big data analysis," Lee said. "We consider the Korean market as important to the point of opening a cloud summit in Korea and are preparing to respond to market demands."
Lee previously led the development of Bixby by serving as CTO of Samsung Electronics' Wireless Business Department until December last year.
About 2,000 people from South Korea's cloud industry participated in the Google event, which was also attended by experts from abroad.