LG, Kakao Mobility to roll out autonomous delivery robot service

LG Electronics Inc. and Kakao Mobility Corp. have agreed to form a future mobility technology partnership with an aim to jointly launch an autonomous delivery robot service.

Under a memorandum of understanding signed on June 17, the two South Korean companies plan to carry out their collaborative trials, known as proof of concept, or PoC, to test the feasibility of their project and solve business and technology problems sometime this year.

The PoC will combine LG’s robotics platform with Kakao’s real-time robot control system to offer indoor autonomous delivery services.

If successful, the two companies said they will take their joint project outdoors to build a completely autonomous robotic delivery system, in which a robot can move independently from a transportation hub to its final destination.

LG’s human-to-machine interface solutions will also be applied to vehicles operated by Kakao Mobility, which runs Korea’s most popular taxi-hailing app, Kakao T.

MOBILITY AS A SERVICE

A unit of tech giant Kakao Corp., Kakao Mobility has been evolving into a mobility-as-a-service platform for its tens of millions of registered users.


“Together with LG, we will strengthen our capabilities for future mobility services while actively looking for promising startups to contribute to building the nation’s mobility ecosystem,” said Yoo Seung-il, chief technology officer of Kakao Mobility.

The LG-Kakao partnership is the latest in a series of moves by Korea’s big companies to delve into future mobility projects.

Last year, Korea’s top automaker Hyundai Motor Co. and Woowa Brothers Corp., the country’s top food delivery app operator, agreed to jointly develop delivery robots capable of traveling through various building structures and equipped with a payment service.

Woowa Brothers said last July that it is launching a pilot last-mile indoor robot food delivery service to meet the growing demand for contactless deliveries in western Seoul.

Write to Seung-Woo Lee and Ji-Eun Jeong at leesw@hankyung.com
In-Soo Nam edited this article.