"Conveyor belts and stacker cranes, once symbols of logistics centers and factories, are disappearing. Robots and physical AI (Physical AI) technology will shorten construction timelines and flexibly reassign processes, ushering in an era of 100% fully autonomous operations."
Myung Chang-guk, an executive director at LG CNS, said this in a lecture on July 9 at the "2026 SME AX Leaders Forum," hosted by ChosunBiz at the Westin Josun Hotel in Jung-gu, Seoul, under the theme "Change is ongoing — a scalable physical AI approach."
Executive Director Myung oversees logistics centers, factory automation, and robotics at LG CNS(LG CNS(064400)). He assessed that "the current level of automation in Korea's logistics and manufacturing sites is about 30%." That is because challenging areas such as loading and unloading or complex picking (the process of grabbing and placing items) still require human hands.
The key to overcoming these limits and raising automation to 100% is "mobile automation" and physical AI. Physical AI refers to technology that equips devices with physical form with AI. This technological innovation is already reshaping industrial sites.
As a new technology that can replace existing transport machinery, Executive Director Myung introduced "mobile automation," which uses AMR (autonomous mobile robot) technology that can move, enabling expansion, downsizing, and reallocation. Representative solutions include the "4-way shuttle," which automatically stores and retrieves cargo of more than 1 ton, and robots that perform sorting.
After LG CNS applied a conveyor-free Autonomous Driving-based solution to a U.S. secondary battery factory, the construction period, which had taken one year, was cut by about 30% to around seven months. "We are seeing savings not only in construction time but also in expense (cost) and maintenance," Executive Director Myung said.
LG CNS is also carrying out an automation project for logistics centers near Chicago and Texas in the United States to store and pick frozen dough. Recently, it opened a conveyor-free factory at Hyundai HD Electric's Cheongju plant that handles materials and supplies, semi-finished products, and finished goods all on a robot base, Executive Director Myung said.
Executive Director Myung pointed to the "VLA (Vision-Language-Action) model," which serves as the brain of robots, as a key element for fully autonomous operations. It is a concept that adds action to vision- and language-model foundations, and Google's Gemini RT and Nvidia's GROOT fall into this category.
He explained, "Unlike existing text-based models, 'action data' performed by robots is very difficult and expensive to collect, so data augmentation and refinement through simulation environments are crucial."
He also noted that the "hand effector," which corresponds to a robot's hand, currently remains at a maximum of about 5 kilograms, and that advances in this area will need to accompany development for a general-purpose robot form factor to be completed.
LG CNS has built three programs and platforms to support the adoption of AI and robots at industrial sites.
One is the RX Innovation Lab. This is a kind of robot-adoption consulting program that analyzes simple, high-intensity, and hazardous tasks, assesses priority and feasibility, and helps move to the proof-of-concept (PoC) stage.
Physical Works "Pose" is a platform that collects and trains data, verifies robot foundation models (RFM) and VLA models, and supports them up to pre-deployment. It is currently running about 30 PoCs, mainly at LG Group affiliates, such as processes handling hazardous materials and e-commerce logistics centers.
Physical Works "Baton" is a platform that splits orders to create workflows, assigns and monitors them as work units to robots, and orchestrates heterogeneous robots.
"In the past, cheap labor and proximity (market access) were the main location conditions for factories and logistics centers, but going forward, how easily they can access technology ecosystems centered on robots and physical AI will be the first consideration," Executive Director Myung projected. "LG CNS aims to design and execute well in line with this direction of change," he said.
The "SME AX Leaders Forum" is a specialized forum in the small and venture field hosted by ChosunBiz, the economic media outlet of the Chosun Media Group, with the goal of spreading AI transformation (AX) among small and midsize businesses. The Ministry of SMEs and Startups, the Seoul Business Agency (SBA), and the Korea Federation of Micro Enterprise (KFME) sponsor the event.