LG Electronics (CEO Jo Joo-wan) made a strategic investment price $60 million (about KRW 80 billion) and bought a stake in Bear Robotics, a man-made intelligence (AI)-based self-driving service robot startup headquartered in Redwood City, Silicon Valley, USA. announced on the twelfth that it had signed a recent stock acquisition agreement.
Bear Robotics was founded in 2017 and is led by CEO Ha Jung-woo, who worked as a Google software engineer tech lead. The corporate is providing services not only in Korea but additionally within the U.S. and Japan, specializing in AI-based autonomous indoor delivery robots.
We now have many engineers from big tech corporations reminiscent of Google. Specifically, it’s attracting attention for its outstanding capabilities within the fields of platformization of business robot software, swarm control technology to regulate multiple robots, and cloud-based control solutions.
He explained that this equity investment just isn’t a financial investment looking for short-term profits, but a component of a strategic investment created from the angle of upgrading the business portfolio. It was said that the goal is to advance the capabilities of business robot businesses reminiscent of delivery and logistics, that are currently being promoted as recent future businesses. Once the stock transaction is concluded, LG Electronics will turn out to be the biggest shareholder of Bear Robotics as a single shareholder.
Jo Joo-wan, CEO of LG Electronics, said on the 'CES 2024' press conference held in Las Vegas earlier this 12 months, “The business robot business is principally focused on service areas reminiscent of delivery and logistics,” and added, “We’ll develop with the opportunity of equity investment or mergers and acquisitions (M&A) open.” “We’re watching the direction rigorously,” he said.
LG Electronics predicts that the paradigm of actual business robots will change to AI-based software-driven robots (SDRs). So as for varied robots to offer services in various spaces, it is crucial to secure the scalability of service robots based on an ‘open structured software platform’. To this end, it’s judged that standardization of AI-based autonomous robot platforms is significant.
Specifically, through a few years of robot business, now we have accrued robot solution know-how in various business spaces reminiscent of airports, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, stores, museums, smart warehouses, and golf courses. LG Future Park in Gumi, Gyeongsangbuk-do has its own production facility for business robots.
Accordingly, the strategy is to dramatically lower market entry costs by leading the standardization of robot platforms by adding Bear Robotics' global R&D infrastructure and software platform capabilities. Ha Jeong-woo, CEO of Bear Robotics, previously said, “Just as Android opened the smartphone era, a standardized open platform is required to revitalize the robot market.”
Meanwhile, LG Electronics has been introducing optimized solutions for various business spaces reminiscent of delivery and quarantine, starting with the Incheon International Airport guide robot service in 2017. Last 12 months, the corporate began targeting overseas markets in earnest, including the US, Japan, and Southeast Asian countries.
Because of this, they recently introduced a 'smart home AI agent' that mixes voice and image recognition with natural language processing and utilizes multimodal AI technology. Last 12 months, we built a robot integrated control platform and data pipeline.
Samsoo Lee, CSO of LG Electronics, said, “From a mid- to long-term perspective, we are going to explore various opportunities by combining differentiated technology areas reminiscent of embedded AI and advancement of robot manipulation to make the robot business a future growth engine.”
Reporter Jang Se-min semim99@aitimes.com