Woowa Brothers founder Kim Bong-jin, left, and Prof. Dennis Hong of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at University of California, Los Angeles check out a robot at Hong's laboratory in Los Angeles on June 1. Screencaptured from Dennis Hong's Instagram

By Kim Jae-heun

Woowa Brothers founder Kim Bong-jin recently visited University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to check out the latest robot developed by Dennis Hong, a professor and founding director of the Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa), according to Hong's Instagram.

Hong posted pictures of Kim and himself at his research center on June 1, where the founder was looking at a robot standing on its own feet. Hong said in his interview with a local media outlet that the Woowa Brothers founder recently visited his laboratory at the UCLA campus.

Kim is currently expanding Woowa Brothers' business partnerships with local and international companies that develop robots specializing in food delivery and cooking.

In 2019, Woowa Brothers, which operates Korea's top food delivery app Baedal Minjok, said it will invent a cooking robot together with Hong. The two named the project "YORI" which means cooking in Korean.

Woowa Brothers added that YORI is a long-term project that will take at least three to four years to complete.

Kim and Hong are working on the development of a robot that can make various movements such as cutting and flipping food on a frying pan.

The food delivery firm has already commercialized delivery robots and started using them at a multipurpose building in Gwanggyo, Suwon, last December. Robots will bring food to private houses in "Gwanggyo Alley Way" after scanning individual QR codes given to each residents there.

The current traffic rules ban delivery robots from travelling on pedestrian roads, crosswalks or public parks. However, the Ministry of Science and ICT only allowed Woowa Brothers to test their delivery robots in Gwanggyo in 2020.