LG vows to enter AI robot business

By Yoon Sung-won

LG Electronics plans to enter the artificial intelligence (AI)-based robot business, it said Sunday.

The nation’s second-largest electronic maker said it will unveil three new robot devices at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2017 in Las Vegas this week, to keep pace with IT giants such as Google, Apple, Samsung Electronics and Naver.

As the CES has been North America’s largest consumer electronics fair, the event has rapidly been evolving into a platform where the latest technologies such as AI and autonomous driving draw more diverse industries such as the automotive industry.

The three new robots include a home “Hub” robot that works like a butler connecting smart home appliances, a gardening robot and one that helps people in public places such as airports. Based on AI technology, the robots will be able to learn the effective routes to move from one place to another in actual environments and how to deal with given tasks, the company said.

As LG Electronics has established a solid presence in the global home appliances market, the company has long been expected to release robots based on AI technologies, working to connect diverse home appliances for user convenience.

In line with such expectations, the company has accumulated technologies regarding robot vacuum cleaners and autonomous driving with plans to connect them to robot platforms.

The company also said it will gradually expand to the public sector, not just the business-to-consumer (B2C) sector in the robotics industry.

“In the robot business, we plan to start from home robots and expand to ones used for public services,” a source from LG Electronics said.