Robotics

Overview

For many years, the concept of the “Robot” has remained the same: to help people with routine labor, mainly in industrial applications.

Recently, with the rapid development of AI, robotics, and cloud computing, the concept of the “robot” has been revolutionized and redefined, allowing for the emergence of a new intelligent robot market for the industrial world and various professional and personal use in people’s everyday lives.

To address this opportunity, Samsung Research aims to secure cutting-edge SW and HW technologies for robotics, delivering rich AI experiences to customers.

It is our promise to the world that we at Samsung Research will never stop challenging ourselves to push the intelligent robotics technology boundary to the next level.

Our Vision

Samsung Bot, Touching Your Daily Life

We believe robots will go beyond simple assistance to become
true companions that touch our daily lives.

The “Samsung Bot” is one of Samsung’s next-generation AI projects.

Our goal is to push ourselves to innovate and make a positive impact on the world. We believe that users of our robots can take advantage of their various AI technologies, giving them special services as if someone was close by all the time.

As such, it is envisioned as the “Samsung Bot, Touching Our Daily Lives,” a companion robot that makes our lives more convenient and happier by helping with our physical activities or communicating with us through cognitive interactions.

We will keep advancing cutting-edge SW and HW technologies for robotics to the commercialization level to serve real benefits to customers.

Research Topics

To achieve our vision, we are developing and securing all the critical technologies for building robots, from SW, such as OS, middleware (MW), and AI, to HW, such as sensors, motors, systems, manipulation, and locomotion. We are integrating them with a common robot platform and trying to implement various ideas, form factors, and possible killer use cases based on the platform. We also collaborate with multiple departments for customer experience, product / user experience (UX) design, and human-robot interaction (HRI) research so that our robotics technologies lead to real customer values.

In particular, we are focusing on three significant layers of robotics technology.

1. Robot Intelligence

We strive to develop intelligent robots to navigate their environments and execute their missions safely and efficiently. It involves designing and implementing algorithms that enable robots to perceive and interpret their surroundings, plan their movements, and perform their actions. Our ultimate goal is to create robust and efficient navigation systems that handle diverse environments such as homes, factories, offices, and outdoor spaces. These systems must be capable of interacting with dynamic environments, including humans, and adapting to changing conditions to ensure safe and efficient navigation.

2. Robot Platform

The use of mobile robots in public places, community facilities, and even in our homes is becoming increasingly common. However, integrating mobile robots into our daily lives still presents numerous challenges.

To overcome these challenges, we are developing a robot SW platform emphasizing robustness, productivity, and modularity. It incorporates essential features for mobile robots, such as simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), spatial understanding, obstacle recognition, and motion planning, as core modules adaptable to various use cases. It also offers well-defined robot application programming interfaces (APIs), world models for spatial information, and development environments with simulators, enabling developers to create applications more quickly and efficiently. Alongside the SW platform, reference HW is being developed to optimize and verify the platform and advance AI functions to achieve robustness in the real world.

3. Robot Mechanism and Control

While the demand for products and services in our daily lives is increasing, challenges around cost and adaptability/robustness to various situations have kept robotic solutions from becoming more popular. To make this a reality, we are developing cost-effective AI-infused robotic locomotion and manipulation mechanisms with real-time control and state-of-the-art indoor autonomous navigation technique. Gait Enhancing & Motivating System (GEMS), a wearable automated device designed to assist walking, and Bot Handy, an Autonomous Mobile Manipulation Robot (AMMR) that acts as an extension of you anywhere you need help in the home, are some results of our efforts.