South Korean tech giant Naver is teaming up with Samsung to deploy 40 robots at Naver’s new second headquarters. The robots will travel the three floors of the new building, enough to demonstrate the use of both the cloud and private 5G networks. All while serving coffee and delivering packages to Naver employees.
“Naver’s new headquarters serves as a testbed to explore future technologies, where 5G network and cloud play a central role,” said Sangyoung Han, executive director of strategy and planning of Naver Cloud, in a statement.
Picture: Samsung.
Naver and Samsung signed an agreement in March 2022 to jointly develop new business models and use cases for private 5G networks. Private 5G networks offer businesses a way to bring secure and reliable connectivity to places where they run data-intensive applications.
South Korea’s first private 5G network
According to Samsung, the Naver deployment is South Korea’s first private 5G network, while Naver’s robot fleet will be the world’s first such 5G use case.
Picture: Samsung.
The autonomous mobile robots will use Samsung’s private 5G network tools to connect to Naver’s cloud. The cloud will act as a kind of “shared brain” for the robot, instead of an integrated chipset. The 40 robots will serve as assistants to Naver employees, delivering packages, coffee and lunch boxes. If, initially, 40 robots will be spread over three floors, the goal is to deploy hundreds of robots throughout the 36-storey building.
The rollout is expected to show how Samsung’s private 5G networks allow companies to download large amounts of data to many people and machines simultaneously.
Along with 5G and the cloud, the robots will leverage innovations such as digital twins, 3D/HD mapping and AI to navigate inside the building.
Source: ZDNet.com