[Edaily Reporter Han Kwangbeom ] Naver (NAVER(035420)) has achieved its first overseas commercial success by supplying the smart building technology solutions from its own headquarters, “1784,” to a large mixed-use complex in Tokyo, Japan. This is considered highly symbolic, as it marks the successful implementation of 1784’s cutting-edge technology—which has long attracted global attention—in an actual overseas commercial space.
Team Naver announced on the 23rd that it is partnering with NTT East and Mitsui Fudosan to implement 1784’s smart building operation technology solutions at the “Tokyo Midtown SY CO., LTD. (Yaesu)” building, located in a key commercial district of Tokyo. Tokyo Midtown Yaesu is a large-scale, 45-story mixed-use complex connected to Tokyo Station, serving as a major commercial infrastructure that houses offices, retail facilities, a hotel, a bus terminal, and an elementary school.
This collaboration marks the first instance of Naver exporting its smart building model—developed since the completion of 1784 in April 2022—to an overseas building. At 1784, now in its fourth year since completion, Naver has accumulated operational know-how combining robots, cloud technology, and digital twins. Building on this, the company has expanded and further refined its smart building technology to its existing headquarters, “Green Factory.”
◇ Applicable to Existing Buildings Without Specialized Infrastructure… Proving Technological Versatility
Above all, the key point is that it has proven the technology’s versatility, enabling the seamless operation of robotics and digital technologies even in existing general-purpose buildings that lack dedicated smart infrastructure, such as robot-only elevators or specialized cloud systems. While 1784 has served as a hub of cutting-edge technology and a global outpost, this Tokyo project marks the first practical demonstration of applying the core technology to an actual, existing mixed-use building.
A Naver official explained, “Since unveiling 1784, we have continuously strived to enter the global market,” adding, “Unlike general platform services, the B2B technology market is highly challenging, but based on the technical expertise accumulated since the completion of 1784, we have achieved our first success in technology exports to overseas markets.”
Naver, NTT East Japan, and Mitsui Fudosan will first launch a full-scale cloud-based autonomous delivery robot service at Tokyo Midtown Yaesu. The service involves delivery robots transporting goods from restaurants located on the first basement level and the fifth floor to “Work Styling,” a shared office space on the seventh floor. A total of four robots will be deployed on-site, incorporating the robot sensor, spatial, and service execution data accumulated by Team Naver through the 1784 project, along with optimal route planning for real-world physical environments and expertise in handling recurring exceptional situations.
◇Core Technologies such as the Rookie and Ark Platforms Deployed… Tailored to Local Conditions
The project is led by Naver Cloud’s Japan Business Development Department and is being carried out with the integrated provision of robotics and vision technologies from Naver Labs. Specifically, it incorporates a wide range of core convergence technologies, including: △ “Rookie,” an indoor autonomous navigation robot; △ “ARC Brain,” an orchestration platform that integrates the movement paths of multiple robots with building facilities such as speed gates and elevators for unified control; △ digital twins; and △ “ARC Eye,” a vision-based localization technology. In particular, multiple robots utilize a digital twin in the cloud as a shared “digital map,” enabling flexible operations even in large mixed-use buildings where facility layouts frequently change.
In accordance with their respective local roles, Mitsui Fudosan will be responsible for providing robot delivery services and managing facility integration, while NTT East will handle the construction of the digital twin environment as well as the maintenance and operation of the delivery robots. The three companies plan to sequentially expand the number of robots in operation while gradually broadening the scope of their collaboration beyond simple delivery to encompass the overall digital transformation (DX) of facility operations, such as intelligent building management.
Furthermore, they envision building next-generation smart building infrastructure that seamlessly connects robots, restaurants, offices, and facility equipment, and plan to continue advancing core technologies that can be applied to various buildings regardless of their facility environments, with the goal of fully deploying the 1784 model at major sites both domestically and internationally.
A Naver official emphasized, “We have proven that the system can be seamlessly applied even to existing buildings without specialized equipment, such as robot-dedicated elevators,” adding, “Using this Japanese case as a springboard, we will firmly establish our position in the global smart building market.”
