[Interview] Head of Intel’s Industry & Robotics Division

John Healy, Vice President and General Manager of Intel’s Industry & Robotics Division, speaks at a press conference during the 

“Intel Robotics Workshop” held at the JW Marriott Hotel in Seocho-gu, Seoul, on the 14th. / Photo: Koo Ja-yoon

Intel is partnering with Korean manufacturers to speed up its push into the physical AI (artificial intelligence) market. It is working with several domestic manufacturers on robot automation technology and has also explored possible cooperation with the Korean government. As NVIDIA expands its own ecosystem in this space, Intel is competing on its open platform and cost competitiveness.

John Healy, Vice President and General Manager of Intel’s Industry & Robotics Division, said at a press conference during the “Intel Robotics Workshop” at the JW Marriott Hotel in Seocho-gu, Seoul, on the 14th, “We have very close relationships with a number of Korean manufacturers. We are helping them optimize automation using advanced physical AI in manufacturing and precision engineering.”

He did not name the partner companies. “I can’t disclose company names right now, but we are working together across a broad and diverse range of fields,” he said. “As the partnerships progress, we’ll be able to share more details.” Separately, Korean companies including Movensys, OneAI, and Circulus showcased robot solutions built on Intel technology at the event.

He also stressed Korea’s role. “Korea has a long history of innovation and precision engineering, which is crucial to advancing physical AI,” Healy said. “Innovation created in Korea can deliver value in other markets around the world.”

Healy attended the “Physical AI Alliance Day” at COEX in Seoul the previous day. Asked about his discussions with Korean government officials, he said, “We strongly support the government-led policies to foster technology and industry. Our approach to the market aligns very well with the government’s direction. We exchanged views on where we could cooperate on the policies the government is pursuing.” He did not disclose specific projects.

“Physical AI is like the moment the steam engine appeared during the Industrial Revolution,” Healy said. “When you bring computing and AI closer to the real, physical world, the possibilities are limited only by our imagination.”

He acknowledged, however, that adoption in the field has fallen short of expectations. “In a recent survey, more than two-thirds of respondents expected to deploy robots within five years, but only 40% had a strategy for operating robots alongside people,” he said. “Our role is to close this gap so that technology proven in the lab can adapt to real-world environments.”

Intel is positioning its Core Ultra Series 3, which integrates a CPU (central processing unit), GPU (graphics processing unit), and NPU (neural processing unit), as its platform for robots. “What matters isn’t just the inference performance of AI models,” Healy said, emphasizing the advantages of a single chip. “Robots need real-time control, and functional safety must be guaranteed.”

Intel is also highlighting its open ecosystem, which lets customers use a variety of AI models and software without being locked into any one company’s technology. On the software side, it presented “Physical AI Studio,” which supports data collection and model fine-tuning, and “OpenVINO Physical AI,” which integrates models into robot functions such as control. “You should be able to train and simulate anywhere,” he said. “Our goal is to make deployment onto Intel-based solutions fast and easy.”

Source: https://n.news.naver.com/article/008/0005426081