KOREA

November 2022
Special 2

From the Past to the Future

LG Discovery Lab Busan Looks to the Future
by Nurturing Digital Forces from a Repository of the Past

WRITTEN BY
Yu Pureum

Photographed by
Kim Byounggu

Museums are often tombs that contain what was once considered ¡°cutting edge.¡± Some people gain insight into the future through artifacts displayed in a museum, but the museum¡¯s time remains in the past. However, there is a museum located in Busan that has recently shed its clothes of the past to become ¡°cutting edge¡± once again.

The LG Science Hall opened in Busan in 1998. Roughly two million youths and citizens of Busan have visited the museum over the past 20 years, enjoying a space that makes it easy to experience the principles of science through exhibits, plays, and experiments.

As the years passed, other national and public science museums equipped with the latest facilities (such as the Busan National Science Museum and the Busan Science Center) opened, and the relatively aged LG Science Hall was closed in 2019.

Resurrected as an AI Education Center

The LG Science Hall, which seemed destined to disappear into the background of history, was reborn as the LG Discovery Lab Busan in 2021. The response came at the request of the local community to find a new way to carry on the vocation of a meaningful place long loved by the young people of Busan.

The former science center has been transformed into an AI education center with educational programs in five fields: robotics, visual intelligence, language intelligence, digital humans, and data intelligence.

The center has a Chatbot Lab that teaches people about natural language processing technology that enables machines to understand human speech. It also has a Gesture Recognition Lab that explains image recognition utilized in motion recognition technology as well as a SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) Lab where people can learn about autonomous technology used in automobiles and vacuum cleaners. Here, young people learn theories and practice what they learn to experience the way artificial intelligence will change the future.

In the past, the LG Science Hall The LG Science Hall opened in Busan in 1998. Roughly two million youths and citizens of Busan have visited the museum over the past 20 years, enjoying a space that makes it easy to experience the principles of science through exhibits, plays, and experiments.

As the years passed, other national and public science museums equipped with the latest facilities (such as the Busan National Science Museum and the Busan Science Center) opened, and the relatively aged LG Science Hall was closed in 2019.

Students take a theory class at the SLAM Lab.

Resurrected as an AI Education Center

The LG Discovery Lab Busan, renovated at the request of Busan Metropolitan City and the citizens of Busan, dreams of a future created together with local residents. The educational programs offered by the LG Discovery Lab Busan are developed in collaboration with researchers and research organizations of LG affiliates who are directly involved in the respective fields.

However, they sought co-prosperity with the region by hiring a freelance instructor from Busan with a science and engineering background as the main instructor and college students in Busan and Gyeongsangnam-do Province as auxiliary instructors.

As proof of interest in AI and the future food industry, young people from Busan and other parts of southeastern Korea are rushing to visit the LG Discovery Lab Busan. Even middle and high schools from more than 100 kilometers away, such as Daegu and Jinju in Gyeongsangnam-do Province and Pohang in Gyeongsangbuk-do Province, attend LG Discovery Lab Busan to experience the society of the future that artificial intelligence will create.

Currently, LG Discovery Lab Busan only operates from Tuesday through Friday. However, starting this November, the operation hours will be extended to include Saturdays in order to accommodate more students.

A student makes a practical robot at the Gesture Recognition Lab.

A Monumental Relic

The LG Discovery Lab Busan is located on the site of the first plastic product factory in Korea. The first private science museum in Busan was built on this site, and 20 years later, was transformed into an AI education center preparing for the future.

The fact that a space has undergone major transformations twice in a short period of time shows the dynamic and flexible aspect of Korea. The LG Discovery Lab Busan is not just a building, but a monumental relic of the dynamic history of Korea.

A cutting-edge future has emerged within this monumental relic. Although it no longer functions as a museum, the identity of one, which teaches people about the past and offers predictions for the future, remains connected to the identity of the LG Discovery Lab Busan.

Students listen to an explanation of the AI picking robot, the main exhibition at LG Discovery Lab in Busan.

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