Robotics

Overview

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

Recently, with the rapid development of AI, robotics, and cloud computing, the concept of the “robot” is being revolutionized and redefined, allowing for the emergence of a new intelligent robot market for the industrial world and even various professional/personal use cases.

To address this opportunity, Samsung Research aims to secure cutting-edge SW and HW technologies for robotics, embracing recent AI advancements.

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

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, utilizing them for a wider range of tasks across various fields.

As such, it is envisioned as ‘Samsung Bot’, a robot that makes our lives more convenient and happier by helping with our physical activities and communicating with us more naturally.

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, actuators, 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 actively collaborate with business units and other internal departments 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 robot intelligence system that handle diverse environments such as homes, factories, and offices to navigate freely and execute various tasks successfully. These systems must be capable of interacting with dynamic environments, including humans, and adapting to changing conditions to ensure safe and efficient operations.

2. Robot Platform

We are developing a robot SW platform emphasizing robustness, productivity, and modularity. It incorporates essential features for robotics AI, 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, enabling developers to build robot products more efficiently. Alongside the SW platform, reference HW (computing core, mobility platform, etc.) is being developed to optimize and verify the platform and AI functions on it 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 robotic locomotion and manipulation mechanisms combining state-of-the-art real-time & AI-infused control technique.