LG Electronics is directly visiting major U.S. universities to secure R&D (research and development) talent to support future businesses such as AI (artificial intelligence) and robotics. As the company expands its business scope from applying AI technology to products and services into physical AI, it aims to proactively secure technical personnel ranging from software (SW) to hardware (HW) required for robot operation.
According to the electronics industry on the 24th, LG Electronics will launch a campaign to secure R&D talent in North America centered on major research and development organizations including the HS, VS, and MS business divisions and the Production Technology Institute. Starting next month on the 9th (local time) with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the company will sequentially visit six universities: Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), University of Michigan (UMICH), Purdue University, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), and University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW Madison) to hold recruitment fairs. Personnel from relevant organizations will participate in these events.
The event targets current master's and doctoral students as well as postdoctoral researchers at universities. Selected candidates will receive industry-academia scholarships, guaranteed employment upon graduation, and those interested can also participate in summer internships. Recruitment fields cover all areas of R&D including SW and HW, electrical and electronics, mechanical engineering, robotics, and production technology.
In particular, recruitment fields for AI and robotics have beenized. For AI, the company seeks talent who master technologies that recognize people, objects, and surrounding environments based on deep learning and machine learning, enabling them to learn autonomously. For robotics, it is looking for personnel in manipulation control, autonomous movement, and object/position recognition fields necessary for recognizing external environments, judging situations, and moving autonomously.
The scope of talent acquisition extends beyond AI, which serves as the brain of robots. The recruitment also includes designing high-efficiency, lightweight motors and actuators (driving devices) that enable actual robot movement. In the actuator field, the company aims to discover talent responsible for gearbox and motor design, edge AI-based torque control, and fault prediction. The focus is on securing core technologies that implement decisions made by AI into actual movements through in-house capabilities.
As LG Electronics develops physical AI as a future business, it is also accelerating efforts to secure key robot technologies. Last month, the company established a robotics business center directly under the CEO (chief executive officer), consolidating business development, sales, and operation functions. It has also set up a dedicated organization for robot learning data factories and is promoting the advancement of its own robot foundation model (RFM).
Recently, LG Electronics has been expanding technical cooperation with global companies in North America. LG Group Chairman Koo Kwang-mo met with Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, at NVIDIA's headquarters in California, U.S., on the 13th (local time) and signed a strategic business cooperation MOU. The two companies have designated robotics, AI factories, and mobility as their three key areas of cooperation and agreed to expand collaboration from physical AI development to on-site implementation.
The connection between recruitment fields and actual business operations is becoming increasingly clear. LG plans to develop next-generation bipedal humanoid robots based on NVIDIA's humanoid foundation model "Isaac Groove" and other models, with a scheduled public release in the first quarter of next year. This will utilize core component technologies from affiliated companies such as LG Electronics' actuators. Later this year, the company will deploy its home robot "LG CLOi" on a U.S. Tennessee washing machine production line to conduct technical validation. By concretizing physical AI development and robot field verification in North America while simultaneously securing research personnel to support these efforts, LG Electronics is taking comprehensive action. An LG Electronics representative stated, "This is being operated as part of a recruitment program for outstanding overseas R&D master's and doctoral talent."
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