▲Newbility's autonomous driving robot 'Newbee' (Photo: Seong Yu-chang)


'Newbie', 2 hours full charge based on fast charging, 8 hours of operation
Equipped with more than 10 sensors, it recognizes and predicts road conditions in real time.

The day is not far when, instead of loud motorcycles racing down alleyways, quiet, small autonomous robots will deliver food, cosmetics, and other items.

Newbility introduced its autonomous driving robot 'Newbee' at NextRise 2022, held at COEX in Seoul from the 16th to the 17th.

As the delivery market, which has grown rapidly since 2015, faces issues such as delivery fees, the possibility of autonomous robots as an alternative has been suggested, and Newbility is working to make this a reality.

CEO Lee Sang-min said, “The role of a company is to solve problems in the market,” and announced that he had developed the autonomous delivery robot “Newby” that can go anywhere at a low price, breaking the stereotypes about robots such as high prices and limited use.

As the delivery market, which has grown rapidly since 2015, faces issues such as delivery fees, we have seen the possibility that self-driving robots could be an alternative.

A Newbility official said the 'Newbee' is powered by an electric battery and takes two hours to fully charge based on fast charging standards, and can be fully charged in a typical urban environment. It is said that it can operate for 7 to 8 hours in an environment.

In addition, when an apartment resident orders delivery from a 'newbie', the person ordering currently has to come down to receive it, but it was revealed that there are plans to build a system where the person can take the elevator up in cooperation with companies such as Hyundai Development Company and GS Construction.

'Newbee' operates by recognizing and predicting real-time road conditions by integrating various sensor technologies such as more than 10 high-performance, high-precision cameras, radars, and ultrasonic sensors.

In terms of price, we chose camera-based autonomous driving instead of lidar, and achieved price competitiveness through self-development of hardware and internalization of autonomous driving software technology.

We implement an urban autonomous driving solution based on Visual SLAM using cameras and sensors, and enable accurate location estimation even in urban areas with densely packed buildings through multi-camera based V-SLAM and sensor fusion.

Compared to LiDAR, it has the disadvantage of image quality varying depending on changes in light intensity, but the cost barrier has been lowered to 2.8 million won, which is about 6 million won cheaper than LiDAR.

A Newbility official said that seeing children being amazed and happy when they see 'Newbie' makes them feel good.

The technological prowess of the self-driving 'Newbie' attracts children's attention, but its cute design also plays a part.

'Newbee' was selected as the winner of the 'Product Category' at the 'iF Design Award 2022 (International Forum Design Award 2022)', a world-renowned design award, and has the following characteristics: △ A cake box shape that intuitively reveals that it is a food delivery robot, △ Two eye shapes that indicate various facial expressions or robot status.△ Equipped with belt-shaped driving lights that help identify the robot when driving at night and serve as a key design element, it was evaluated as a new attempt in the existing serving robot or delivery robot field.