Japan’s NEC Corporation develops robot control tech using AI
NEC’s in-house demonstrations of this technology have confirmed that a robot’s travel time can be reduced by up to 50% when compared to conventional methods.
Japan’s NEC Corporation, a provider of information and network technology solutions, has developed technology that utilizes AI to enable safe, efficient autonomous control of robot movement even in complex environments with many obstacles. NEC’s in-house demonstrations of this technology have confirmed that a robot’s travel time can be reduced by up to 50% when compared to conventional methods, the Tokyo-based company said in a media release.
This new technology utilizes NEC’s proprietary AI, which has been trained with the knowledge of multiple AIs, to generate optimal travel paths in real time. NEC aims to commercialize this technology by the end of fiscal 2026.
Features of the robot control technology developed by NEC to address these issues include proprietary AI that generates optimal routes in real time. NEC has developed a proprietary AI that can learn the paths generated by multiple AI systems and generate multiple paths at once. This enables the generation of safe and efficient optimal paths even in environments with irregularly placed obstacles, thereby realizing real-time robot control, the media release said.
In simulations on a 50-meter-long test course with randomly placed obstacles, it was confirmed that by using this technology the time required to run through the course could be reduced by up to 50% compared to conventional methods. This makes it possible to roughly double the efficiency of robot movement, while ensuring safety and contributing to further improvements in work efficiency on site, the media release said.
