Kakao Mobility has opened the ‘NEMO (Next Mobility) Garage’ research center in Dangsan-dong, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul, aimed at researching future mobility technologies and building digital twins.
Kakao Mobility has established an ‘in-house factory’ at the NEMO Garage, where they gather hardware research facilities and personnel necessary for autonomous vehicle research and digital twin construction. This is a significant step beyond their previous focus on platform technology development, as they expand their research realm into hardware development for future vehicles and infrastructure, planning to provide an ‘end-to-end solution for future mobility’ to innovate mobility.
The NEMO Garage spans 2,734 m2 across six stories. It features maker spaces capable of hardware prototyping and component production using tools such as a 3D printing farm, a PCB (printed circuit board) printer, and reverse engineering scanners, as well as a self-contained data storage infrastructure to enhance data security and reduce service implementation time. Furthermore, it houses a digital twin factory capable of comprehensive development of digital twin solutions from data acquisition to updates. The facility includes a testbed for performance experiments of autonomous vehicles and mapping robots, validating indoor and outdoor hybrid localization technologies, and sensor calibration, enabling rapid execution of the entire process from design to prototyping to verification in one place.
The relevant teams at Kakao Mobility’s Future Mobility Research Institute will reside at the NEMO Garage to study various mobile entities compatible with the Kakao T platform and to collaborate on technology development for digital twin production. With the establishment of a foundation to optimize their MMS (Mobile Mapping System) devices, ‘ARGOS,’ for specific environments, they aim to expand cooperation with various partners and contribute to the proliferation of the digital twin ecosystem.
Kakao Mobility plans to research smart mobility infrastructure technologies such as edge infrastructure, V2X (Vehicle-to-Everything) communication, autonomous parking, infrastructure-based autonomous driving, and robotics through the NEMO Garage in the future.
In the long term, they intend to further expand their research realm to encompass the development of smart mobility vehicles such as PBV (Purpose Built Vehicle) and SDV (Software Defined Vehicle).
Jang Seong-wook, Director of Kakao Mobility’s Future Mobility Research Institute, stated, “We have secured a research institute dedicated to autonomous driving and digital twin technologies, specialized in future mobility, as the first platform company.” He emphasized the commitment to lead lifestyle innovation and expand global outreach opportunities through bold and active investments in future mobility technologies and digital twins.
Lee Sang-jin daedusj@autodiary.kr