Fleet of 100 ‘brainless’ robots
SKorean internet firm trying to integrate machines into a world of workplace cubicles
SEONGNAM, South Korea — The new workers zipped around the office completing mundane tasks like fetching coffee, delivering meals and handing off packages. They did not get in anyone’s way or violate personal space. They waited unobtrusively for elevators with unfailing politeness. And, perhaps most enticingly, they did not complain.
That’s because they were robots.
Naver — a soup-to-nuts internet conglomerate in South Korea — has been experimenting with integrating robots into office life for several months. Inside a futuristic, starkly industrial, 36-story high-rise on the outskirts of Seoul, a fleet of 100 robots cruise around on their own, moving from floor to floor on robot-only elevators and sometimes next to humans, rolling through security gates and entering meeting rooms.
Naver’s network of web services, including a search engine, maps, email and news aggregation, is dominant in South Korea, but its reach abroad is limited, lacking the global renown of a company like Google. The company has been on the hunt for new avenues for growth and sees the software that powers robots in corporate office spaces as a product that other companies may eventually want.
Robots have found a home in other workplaces, such as factories and in retail and hospitality, but they are largely absent from the white-collar world of cubicles and conference rooms.
There are thorny privacy questions: A machine teeming with cameras and sensors roaming company hallways could be a dystopian tool of corporate surveillance if abused, experts say. Designing a space where machines can move freely without disturbing employees also presents a complicated challenge.
But Naver has done extensive research to make sure that its robots — which resemble a rolling garbage can — look, move and behave in a way that makes employees comfortable. And as it develops its own robot privacy rules, it hopes to write the blueprint for the office robots of the future.
“Our effort now is to minimize the discomfort they cause to humans,” said Kang Sang-chul, an executive at Naver Labs, a subsidiary developing the robots.
Yeo Jiwon, who works in the company’s social impact team, recently ordered coffee on Naver’s workplace app. Minutes later, the “Rookie” exited the elevator on the 23rd floor, zoomed through the security gates and approached her desk. Once nearby, the robot opened its storage compartment with a cup of iced coffee that had been prepared at a Starbucks on the second floor.
The robots are not always perfect, Yeo said, sometimes moving slower than expected or occasionally stopping too far from where she sits.
But the deliveries save her time, she said. Naver designed the office from the ground up with the robots in mind, starting construction in 2016. Every door is programmed to open when a robot approaches. The ceilings are marked with numbers and QR codes to help the robots orient themselves.
Naver said one feature of its robots was that they are “brainless,” meaning they are not rolling computers that process information. Instead, the robots communicate over a private 5G network with a centralized “cloud” computing system. The robots’ movements are processed using data from cameras and sensors.