South Korea’s internet portal giant Naver Corp. showed off its hardware capabilities in artificial intelligence and robotic technologies at its debut on the world’s biggest consumer electronics trade show CES in the United States.

At CES 2019 running until Jan. 11 in Las Vegas, Naver unveiled the world’s first robotic arm that can be controlled via a 5G network along with other robotic and AI technologies.

AMBIDEX is a robot arm marked by innovative cable-driven mechanisms that make any interaction with humans safe. It supports high-speed, wireless, real-time control from remote locations using the low latency and high throughput of 5G networks. Such control is realized by cloud computing without a heavy built-in processor in the robot, leading to a lighter and more energy-efficient system.

Naver has pioneered the connectivity between a robot’s main control and the outside world. Adoption of 5G technology through collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies is the industry’s first attempt, said an official of NAVER LABS, NAVER’s R&D subsidiary.

Naver also presented an advanced driver’s assistance system which integrates a deep learning algorithm and issues warnings with only one camera, and 3D AR head-up display “AHEAD” which provides comfortable navigation when driving by projecting traffic information as if it appears on the road ahead rather than inside the windshield.

It is the first for the Korean online portal giant to take part in CES. It presented its next-generation robot arm dubbed AMBIDEX and other robotic technologies at a 650 square meter log cabin booth at the trade show under the theme of Ambient Intelligence, which is the delivery of on-demand information and services to people at any time and location based on context.

Compared with its global rival Google, Korea’s search engine jumped in the robotics race much later.

The company officially launched Naver Labs, Naver’s R&D subsidiary that focuses on the development of autonomous driving, robotics and artificial intelligence, in January 2017. Since then it has been aggressively expanding its investment in the future technologies other than internet portal and search engine to catch up the pioneers.

Naver Labs now runs AI research centers in Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and France.

By Lee Dong-in and Minu Kim

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