A dancing robot opened LG CNS’ showcase, greeting Chief Technology Officer Park Sang-yeop. Another robot handed a microphone to CEO Hyun Shin-gyun to begin the event. In a logistics demo area, robots moved and worked together without human control.
A humanoid robot picked up a plastic bag and passed it toward a box on a conveyor belt. A quadruped robot carried the box, and a wheeled robot and an autonomous mobile robot, or AMR, placed it on a designated shelf. LG CNS described the scene as a preview of what it called an era of self-moving robots.
LG CNS on May 7 held a “Robot Transformation (RX) Media Day” at its Magok headquarters in Seoul and unveiled its RX platform, “Physical Works.” It also introduced two core platforms: the robot training platform “Physical Works Forge” and the integrated operations platform “Physical Works Baton.”
The company said the center of the robot industry is shifting from hardware to real-world deployment. It said the key is building a system that trains robots using on-site data and then operates and upgrades them reliably, rather than simply installing robots.
LG CNS defined RX for industrial sites as an end-to-end service covering the full process — from introducing intelligent robots to training and operations — and said it is moving to expand in the market.
“LG CNS does not manufacture robot hardware directly, but we source the most suitable robots for each site, train them with data, and operate and manage them so they can perform real work,” Hyun said. “A company’s competitiveness depends on how quickly it can apply robots in the field and turn that into results.”
He added that while the robot industry has developed around hardware, the priority is now making robots perform tasks well, validating them on site and operating them stably — “the essence of RX” as LG CNS defines it.
Physical Works Forge is a robot training platform that collects and learns from industrial-site data to prepare robots for deployment, LG CNS said. It supports the full process from data collection to simulation and on-site application, and can cut deployment time from several months to about one to two months, the company said. Securing high-quality on-site data quickly and training robots with it is a core capability, it added.
Physical Works Baton is designed to integrate control and monitoring of different robots from different manufacturers within a single system. It assigns tasks and manages operations in real time across biped, quadruped, wheeled and AMR robots. Its name refers to a conductor’s baton, reflecting its role in orchestrating multiple robots, the company said.
LG CNS said that applying the system to an environment operating about 100 robots could raise productivity by about 15% and cut operating costs by up to 18%.
Lee Jun-ho, head of LG CNS’ Smart Logistics & City Business Division, said earlier smart-factory automation largely repeated preset motions, while physical AI-based RX enables robots to recognize situations and carry out tasks autonomously. He said the industry is rapidly shifting from showcase demonstrations to delivering results in real manufacturing and logistics sites.
Lee said the biggest barrier to deployment is what he called the “PoC swamp,” referring to proof-of-concept projects that do not progress. He added that if companies can quickly collect and train on high-quality data, the pace of field deployment will accelerate.
LG CNS said it is conducting robot PoCs with more than 20 customers in South Korea and overseas. In the Busan Smart City National Pilot City project, it said it is using Physical Works Baton to integrate monitoring of four types of robots: patrol, barista, luggage-carrying and cleaning robots.
The company said it plans to expand its RX business based on robot forms optimized for industrial sites and industry-specific robot foundation models, or RFMs.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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