Kakao Mobility launches future mobility hardware think tank

South Korea's Kakao Mobility has launched a think tank to study next-generation mobility hardware under the company's bid to lead overall innovation in the mobility sector by boosting its hardware capacity in addition to its mobility platforms.

Kakao Mobility on Monday said it opened Nemo (Next Mobility) Garage in Seoul. The think tank's name is derived from the English-language term "next mobility," which refers to next-generation mobility.

Dubbed Kakao Mobility's so-called in-house factory, Nemo Garage will study hardware and parts in future mobility sectors like self-driving vehicles and digital twins. The company said it integrated its internal hardware research facilities and personnel, adding that the related team of another Kakao Mobility institute on future mobility that studies next-generation mobility technology will be stationed at Nemo Garage.

The six-story headquarters of Nemo Garage has a floor area of 2,734 square meters to house an array of equipment such as three-dimensional printing and printed circuit board machines and reverse engineering scanners at Maker Space, which produces hardware prototypes and a range of parts. The institute also built its own data storage infrastructure to maintain data security and speed up service.

Through Nemo Garage, Kakao Mobility will study technology for smart mobility infrastructure such as edge infrastructure, vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication, autonomous parking, infrastructure-based self-driving and robotics. Over the long term, the research sectors will be expanded to cover smart mobility vehicles such as purpose built and software defined vehicles.

Write to Han-Gyeol Seon at always@hankyung.com