NAVER Cloud Platform has launched ARC eye as a fully managed cloud-based digital twin service. Digital twin refers to the technology that replicates the physical world in the digital world. It is regarded as key data for innovative industries ranging from service robots, AR, autonomous driving, smart buildings, and smart cities. NAVER has been developing technology that can produce digital twins of large-scale spaces for many years and has taken the first step towards productization through the NAVER Cloud Platform.
Robot-Based Mapping, AI-Based Localization, and Cloud-Based Services
ARC eye is a service that builds digital twins of large-scale indoor and outdoor spaces such as vast shopping malls and buildings and provides artificial intelligence-based localization technology such as visual localization. Until now, NAVER LABS has used this technology to transfer various spaces to the digital world such as Incheon International Airport, COEX, and Gangnam Station. Most recently, this technology has been applied to NAVER’s robot-friendly smart building ‘1784’ so as to be used as the eyes of 100 robot units. This technology is also being used for the National Museum of Korea’s digital twin-based AR navigation beta service.
Increasing the Scalability of Digital Twin Services to Lay Foundations for Global Expansion
NAVER plans to respond to the demand in the digital twin technology market by providing ARC eye through the NAVER Cloud Platform. Digital twin solutions require advanced technologies and considerable costs. Hence, NAVER LABS has received various requests for ARC eye from many companies and organizations, both domestic and international.
“Ever since NAVER exhibited this technology at the 2019 CES event, there have been many collaboration requests from global companies regarding NAVER’s digital twin and localization technology,” said Donghwan Lee, NAVER LABS’ Vision group leader. “The fields and services seeking to utilize digital twin data are much more diverse than we expected.”
ARC eye, which was released through the NAVER Cloud Platform, offers all the necessary tools including digital twin creation, mapping robots and devices to do so, AI-driven localization APIs, and 2D mapping tools. The service was launched as a fully managed cloud-based service instead of an on-premise product, providing support ranging from data processing to API generation, which maximizes user convenience. Also, since it is a cloud-based service, the user is able to respond flexibly to various situations such as large-scale data storage and processing, or changes in usage, ensuring stable business operations. With the ‘pay-as-you-go’ policy where the user only pays according to their resource usage, users are able to save huge initial investment costs in the early stages of a new business based on digital twin technology and still take advantage of the latest equipment, algorithms, and web-based consoles. Such product design was made possible thanks to NAVER LABS’ technology, NAVER Cloud Platform’s business know-how, and NAVER 1784 which has served as a massive testbed.
Mr. Sangyoung Han, the executive director of NAVER Cloud Platform’s Strategy & Planning said, “Many participants in the previous S. Korea-Saudi Arabia Construction Roadshow expressed their keen interest in NAVER’s digital twin technology applied at 1784 and asked very specific questions.” He stressed that “NAVER Cloud Platform will become a global leader in Digital Twin As A Service with ARC eye as its first product.”