LAVER LABS

To this day, server and platform engineering has created many services in the virtual space of mobile and web. NAVER LABS has one more special domain in real space, not virtual. That is, with robots. In particular, the service robots that NAVER LABS makes are "brainless," with their brain-equivalent computer existing and operating outside the main body. It is very important to have a smart “brain” that also serves as a cloud system linked to the main body.

Brainless robot technology allows many robots to be efficiently operated via the cloud through ultra low-latency communication with their brain-equivalent computer separated from their main body.

Currently, NAVER LABS is getting ready to launch a wide array of robot services and brain systems, such as its brainless robots to be deployed at the second office building of NAVER, which is scheduled to be completed in 2021. This is a new challenge to discover and address issues that have never existed in the world between the unfamiliar domain of robots and cloud technology. We caught up to the platform engineering team who is building the first robot brain of NAVER.

Q. What is special about the server for robots?

Hyeonjae Park (Robot Server Development) | The development process for any service or platform, such as setting and putting much effort into challenging tasks, implementing them with codes, verifying them and redesigning them, is identical. However, once robots are added to the domain, the server deployed in the cloud has to be reliable and display the properties of low-latency and real-time. That means the server must be able to receive and process sensor data from robots and command the robots again within a short period of time in an accurate and uninterrupted manner. Also, as it is necessary to establish connections with a variety of unfamiliar clients such as elevators and gates to move robots in actual space, we are largely faced with issues to address that we have never seen before. 

"The server engineers at NAVER LABS have one more medium, and that is the robot.”

The initial version of the brain system, the robot management system used in the pilot operation of the cafe delivery robot, AROUND C.

Changsoo Kim (Robot Server Development) | Another reason why the robot server is highly special is that it exists in the real world rather than in the unfamiliar space of robots and virtual space, and therefore, it has a more robust and higher architecture and stability. The robot server has to rapidly identify surrounding people and objects and calculate the optimal path at every moment through various information, and choose to act in the safest manner possible even if an issue arises in the server.

Q. Why is it necessary to separate the brain from the robot into the cloud?

"If we think about it carefully, robots have too much work to do. Even with a simple movement, robots need to carry out a lot of computations in an instant.”

Changsoo Kim | It is particularly important for service robots that interact with humans as one small computation is directly linked to the safety of humans. Too much strength can cause injury, while too little strength can cause the job to fail. Therefore, robots continuously calculate the appropriate strength or behavior in the middle of each operation. For these momentary and rapid computations, the arithmetic logic unit of robots’ hardware requires more and more high performance, causing the battery to become larger. What if these operations are performed in the cloud and connected over a wireless network? The main body of the robot will be lighter, and no heavy batteries will be required.

Now, let us look at how a number of robots provide services. There are many more issues for individual robots to consider. Each robot needs to know how far it is located from other robots, how fast it is, and how to collaborate so as to provide stable services. At this point, the robot server acts to control the robots in a more efficient and smart manner in the central cloud. It processes complex operations for robots and transmits them rapidly to the robots. It watches every situation, identifies their locations, and control their movement, speed, and location to ensure that the multi-robots are efficient. As a result, robots can become lighter and smaller. 

Certainly, these are tough tasks. However, I believe that robots will eventually look this way as all products develop and become popularized towards the direction of lightweight and efficiency. In fact, the most commonly used robot vacuum cleaner is also going through this process.

"This is not possible with the evolution of the robot itself. I believe it can be achieved with a well-built robot server—that is, the brain."

Q. What does a well-made brain system mean?

Hyeonjae Park | Considering the era of the web and apps, the cloud market has grown, significantly lowering the hurdle for new services to come out. As the cloud has been well-built, we were able to focus on the business or the service itself instead of putting efforts on the server development and management in the service development. If we provide a universal and reliable robot server system for robots, we will be able to apply robots to many areas without the burden of developing servers.

We are building an environment where many robot operators around the world can focus on their businesses/services without any need to worry about servers. I believe this will trigger the robot market to expand. 

Q. What will be the role of server engineers in the future where robots are popular?

Changsoo Kim | The server engineers do not directly handle the robots. However, we work closely with robot engineers to make sure that server and robot appropriately interact with each other. In other words, if the robot engineer creates a path between people and the robot, the platform/server engineer establishes a path between the server and the robot. The two paths come together.

"Establishing a natural connection between robots-people-server is probably the role of server developers and the cloud robot system we are building.”

Hyeonjae Park | Even in the field of robots, the roles of platform and server engineers are not much different from other companies. It is a general job of software development. Making a variety of efforts through challenging tasks, designing, implementing with codes, validating, redesigning, and so on... However, since the domain is a robot, we discover and address new issues that were non-existent between hardware/robot and software/cloud-native technology. To put it more simply, I believe we need to build a system that properly interacts with buildings and a system that is easy to use and expandable for other robot service developers.
 

Q. A word to future colleagues outside

Changsoo Kim | The server engineers at NAVER LABS create media with users who exist in the real world, not virtual space. And we can see them interact with the real world. This is not an easy challenge in general server development. Therefore, I would like to mount a challenge with more people.

Hyeonjae Park | All challenges at NAVER LABS are new and difficult to overcome. However, it is fun to address difficult issues. I always work hard to come up with the best solutions, but I believe it is a great advantage to be able to experience all the processes. If you would like to strive to design a reliable cloud-based system in its entirety, this is the right place for you. Join us!

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