Signing of MOU for Joint Promotion of Robot-Friendly Hospital Project
Hyundai Motor Company and Kia's robotics solutions are being introduced to hospital medical sites.
On the 7th, Hyundai Motor Company and Kia announced that they signed a 'Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for Joint Promotion of Robot-Friendly Hospital Construction Project' with Hallym University Medical Center at Hallym University Sacred Heart Hospital in Anyang, Gyeonggi Province.
The signing ceremony was attended by Hyun Dong-jin, Head of Hyundai Motor Company and Kia Robotics Lab (Executive Director), Kim Yong-sun, Director of Hallym University Medical Center, and other officials from both sides.
(Photo from left) Hyun Dong-jin, Head of Hyundai Motor·Kia Robotics Lab, and Kim Yong-sun, President of Hallym University Medical Center, posing for a commemorative photo. Provided by Hyundai Motor·Kia
This collaboration was promoted to introduce the 'Robotics Total Solution' owned by Hyundai Motor Company and Kia into medical spaces and to jointly develop and demonstrate robot services optimized for hospital environments.
Since 2024, Hyundai Motor Company and Kia have been conducting a 'Robot-Friendly Building' construction project that provides various robot services such as indoor delivery, unmanned parcel delivery, and electric vehicle charging robots targeting private offices including Factorial Seongsu.
Based on their experience in office-based robot operations, Hyundai Motor Company and Kia plan to expand their business area to medical spaces, which require greater complexity and precision, to build 'Robot-Friendly Hospitals.'
Hospitals are high-density environments where unspecified numbers of patients and medical staff coexist with various objects such as wheelchairs and mobile beds. Precise driving performance and safety of robots are considered key technological elements. Additionally, since special purposes such as medical information protection, infection control, and access control must be considered, it is important to develop hospital-specific robot technologies differentiated from existing office robots to realize a true robot-friendly hospital.
To this end, Hyundai Motor Company and Kia have partnered with Hallym University Medical Center, which has the largest scale of robot operation experience among domestic medical institutions, to actively demonstrate the development of robot solutions optimized for hospital sites.
According to the agreement, Hyundai Motor Company and Kia Robotics Lab will be responsible for building robot services and solutions tailored to medical spaces, providing related consulting, design support, and technical reviews, and establishing business models in the medical field. Specifically, they will accelerate the development of hospital-customized delivery robots and control systems, as well as facial recognition-based authentication and special item delivery history management systems.
Hallym University Medical Center will provide actual medical spaces as test beds for the development of hospital robots and services. They will also directly operate the Robotics Lab's solutions to verify usability and collect and provide various requirements and feedback from internal hospital users.
Based on the data secured at the first demonstration base, Hallym University Sacred Heart Hospital, both parties will promote new robot product planning and technological advancement and aim to expand the technology to other hospitals in the future.
Furthermore, they plan to jointly establish standards and certification systems for robot-friendly hospitals and strengthen the foundation of the related market.
Executive Director Hyun said, "Through cooperation with Hallym University Medical Center, which has the largest scale of service robot operation experience in Korea, robotics solutions will contribute to reducing the workload of medical staff, enhancing patient convenience, and moving toward a better society."
Director Kim said, "We hope to build a human-centered robot-friendly hospital that satisfies both medical staff and patients through cooperation with Hyundai Motor Company and Kia Robotics Lab, which possess competitiveness in robotics, AI, and mobility fields."
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