The South Korean tech giant Naver is partnering with Samsung to deploy 40 robots in Naver’s new second headquarters. The robots will roam around three floors of the new building, showcasing what businesses can do with cloud computing and private 5G networks — all the while, they’ll be serving coffee and delivering packages to Naver’s employees.
“NAVER’s new headquarters serves as a test bed to explore technologies of the future, where 5G network and cloud play a central role,” Sangyoung Han, Executive Director at Naver Cloud Strategy and Planning at Naver Cloud, said in a statement.
Naver and Samsung signed an agreement in March to jointly develop new private 5G networks business models and use cases. Private 5G networks give enterprises a way to bring secure and reliable connectivity to locations where they are running data-intensive applications. Samsung says the Naver deployment is South Korea’s first private 5G network — while Naver’s fleet of robots will be the first 5G use case of its kind in the world.
Naver’s autonomous mobile robots will utilize Samsung’s private 5G networking tools to connect to the Naver cloud. The cloud will act as a sort of “shared brain” for the robot, in lieu of a built-in chipset. The 40 robots will serve as assistants for Naver employees, delivering packages, coffee and lunch boxes. While they’ll start with 40 robots across three floors, the plan is to eventually deploy hundreds of robots across the entire 36-floor building.
Among other things, the deployment should showcase how Samsung’s private 5G radios enable enterprises to upload large amounts of data across many people and machines simultaneously.
In addition to 5G and the cloud, the robots will leverage innovations like digital twins, 3D/HD mapping and AI to navigate the inside of the building.
