Korean technology company Hancom is announcing that its latest AI-powered robot, the Hancom Malang Malang Home Robot, will be available in the US home services market starting in 2021. Earlier generations of Hancom Robotics’ AI-based home services robots, including the Hancom Toki robot, have been widely used for several years in Korea and other markets.
Up for a 2021 CES Innovation Award, the Hancom Malang Malang Home Robot uses AI to provide a wide range of assistive and edutainment services for children, teens, parents, even the elderly. Services include personal assistance, natural language cognitive Q&A, home patrol services, memory sharing, storytelling services provided in a family voice, collaborative educational content services, interactive entertainment services, and a variety of home IoT services.
Physically, the 30-inch tall Hancom Malang Malang Home Robot’s head, arms, and feet are controlled by 10 motors that can respond with human-like gestures, emotions, and AI-controlled on-screen facial expressions. Natural language voice recognition technology enables the Hancom Malang Malang Home Robot to understand instructions and questions, and to respond to questions with contextually appropriate answers.
Dr. Yonmook Park, CTO of Hancom Robotics says that “The Hancom Malang Malang Home Robot is the first AI edutainment service robot that utilizes the latest AI-based technologies for machine reading comprehension, Q&A, voice synthesis and HRI(Human Robot Interaction) to provide an unparalleled user-friendly experience. The incorporation of key innovations in AI-based recognition of faces, objects, and voices also add to the robot’s contextual intelligence so that it can adapt to the surroundings and interact with the user in a more personal way.”
“Hancom Robotics is in discussions with a variety of English-language educational content providers to deliver enriched educational contents,” says Dr. Wonsok Yun, head of global business at Hancom Group. “The Home Robot’s built-in machine reading comprehension ability will allow it to analyze and understand the contents fully so that students of all ages can enjoy a remarkably immersive and interactive experience.”
Technically, the Hancom Malang Malang Home Robot reflects nearly 20 years of R&D by the Hancom Robotics division and relies on next-generation AI-based human-robot interaction (HRI) machine reading comprehension (MRC), voice synthesis, facial-, object-, and voice-recognition technologies. The precursor to Hancom Malang Malang Home Robot, Hancom Robotics’ Toki home robot, has been a visible presence on the floor at CES since 2018 and is already widely used in a wide variety of educational institutes and web services, including KidZania, Yoon’s English School, Kakao, and Kidsnote in Korea.
