NC AI and Hyundai Rotem Selected for National Physical AI Project... "Leading World Model Development"

"Accelerating Defense AI Transition with the World Model"

NC's artificial intelligence (AI) division, NC AI, announced on May 28 that it has formed a consortium with Hyundai Rotem and has been selected as the final contractor for the national research and development project commissioned by the Agency for Defense Development (ADD), titled "Physical AI-based Integrated Simulator and Modular Robot System."

NC AI logo. Provided by NC AI

This project is a large-scale government initiative aimed at maximizing the efficiency of combined manned and unmanned weapon systems in future battlefield environments. It involves building a digital twin-based simulator and modular robot hardware that can organically control multiple types and numbers of unmanned robots, while minimizing the gap between real and virtual environments. NC AI will lead the development of the "World Model," a crucial core technology for implementing the "Robot Foundation Model (RFM)," which serves as the brain of the robot in this project.

The World Model is a Physical AI technology that enables robots to conduct simulations reflecting the physical laws and environmental changes of the real world, turning these into training data. It is designed to address the "simulation-to-reality gap," a problem where unmanned robots trained in virtual environments malfunction in the real world due to physical variables or friction encountered on actual battlefields or rough terrain.

NC AI plans to organically combine its expertise in building large-scale, high-precision 3D virtual worlds with its proprietary 3D generative AI technology. In March, NC AI successfully released its World Foundation Model (WFM) technology, which delivers performance on par with the global state-of-the-art (SOTA) models while using only about 25% of the graphics processing unit (GPU) resources.

NC AI expects that this collaboration with Hyundai Rotem on the national project will serve as an opportunity to secure domestic sovereignty in Physical AI. Yeon-Soo Lee, CEO of NC AI, stated, "Based on NC AI's lightweight World Model, we will develop the best Physical AI simulator that perfectly connects virtual and real worlds, taking the lead in accelerating the transition to defense AI (AX) in Korea."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.