LG CTO on how the coronavirus influences his products

Coronavirus has forced much of America into a lockdown. But in Berlin, the effect of pseudo tronics trade show is happening with actual attendees in person. With consumer electronics giant LG presenting at the show and balancing both the physical and virtual presence we ask now one With me is LG Electronics Chief Technology Officer IP Park. So if this were a normal year, we'd all be talking about the latest televisions or appliances that Etha. How has the Coronavirus changed how you approach a conference like this? It changed everything. Yesterday we held our Ephah Press Conference in the form of holograms, so I was there as a hologram. It was different, but it was pretty interesting. Tell me more about that. Like how does that work being at a show in hologram form while you're presented with in souls So what we did was we did a hybrid version of press conference. So I was virtually there through hologram and then at the later part of the press conference, I was connected live to Berlin from Seoul, Korea. I was at our LG smart home. LG Thank you home, presenting some features of our smart home Live to the audience in berlin's. And I think it worked out pretty well specially, it fit really well with the current situation with the Corona virus. Right, let's say about some of the products that you've mentioned. Your one on one that was most buzzed-about was the the battery powered air purifier mask. Tell me more about that? This is something that we develop, utilizing our technology that we had before. We were you should know that we had our period care air purifier products which was very, very popular. And we were able to miniaturize all the technology fit this into mask so that the mask comes with a mini version of Pure Care air filter in their air purifier in there. It's got hyper filter, the tempo filter is fan operated and it adjusts to your breathing, inhale and exhale so you feel very, very comfortable wearing this For a long period of time, and we have currently donated thousands of these to medical staff for them to utilize during his Corona situation. He also mentioned in your keynote a a thermal imaging camera with facial recognition that. Can be used to detect coronavirus. How does it How does that work? The traditional thermal camera is that it detects people with temperature and you need people to staff this you need somebody sitting behind a camera, look at the screen and you know manually Detect people with temperature. All we did was we combine this with our intelligent computer vision camera so that not only it detects the temperature but also detects the face through facial recognition. It can recognize who's passing by and also it can detect temperatures so it can do everything automatically. You know, there was, you know, I saw through the virtual booth that you showed off, you know, there are mentioned of products with UV lights, and clearly there's the facemask and the thermal imaging camera. I'm just curious whether there was sort of a conscious effort to address the pandemic. In the products that you showed off at Evo, One of the major themes this year is safety and another theme is care. So I talked about yesterday during the press conference safety care Smart Home and entertainment, all sort of relevant to the current pandemic era. But even if pandemic passes, all of these are very, very important and safety is one of the most important things that we Looking into, and no, we do this very quickly responding to customer needs because of an urgent need to meet our customers demands. That's an interesting point, because I know a lot of these features and these new additions really address what's going on with the pandemic right now. But do you think that some of the So its features some of the stuff that you put her designed in these products are going to stick around with us. Even after the coronavirus goes away. Very interesting question, you know, as soon as coronavirus started the whole world was just stopped. We could not travel no more business travel no more face-to-face meeting so we had to adapt so a lot of things change within LG Electronics as other- Companies I'm sure we quickly had to utilize more online tools for meetings, more digital, But eventually when the coroner passes, and if so, for example, the tool that we're using the video conferencing tool that we're using right now I think this is zoom right? This is not yet perfect cuz the connectivity is not perfect. Right the user experience is not perfect. So, we are using this because out of necessity .However, if pandemic passes and this if this too is not as effective as meeting face to face Then some of these items that we had to use will go away they will not stick. The change that happened during the pandemic is not permanent. Some of them are permanent or solid but not permit. I'm saying that it's not given. We have to make it happen and make it last with sufficient technology. So we are learning some of those right now and hopefully will make the world better. Yeah, well I want to spoil that further in terms of you know, the research and the work that you guys have been doing at LG Like what? What do you see what what kind of work are you putting into worry focusing on in terms of technology that can make the world a better place? We are trying to shift the focus of our business from individual products to more of a system intelligence and think you is the one that ties them all together in the home or in the car in the office. It's think your represents our AI and IoT. Technology combined together. And through this we tie all of our products together. And through that connectivity. We bring in services from outside to provide a better solution service for our customers. So the what I showcase last night Was thinking to home, which is sort of an ultimate example of what the future lifestyles should be through these connectivity and digital technologies, in terms of I guess how they directly address Coronavirus. I'm just curious. If you can sorta list out, maybe some of the ways that these products your thank you platform are addressing that the kinda health and safety aspect of things. Several products and technologies that emphasizes anti virus bacteria, anti bacteria And hygiene. We have something called True steam technology that is introduced that was introduced through our styler product which is a steam based clothing care system. And it has a antivirus feature that you can rely on. So when you come home from outside you feel that maybe there's some virus or a germ Stuck on your clothes. You can put in a styler make it go through this antivirus cycle and it gets resolved everything. Now we use the same choose theme technology in in other products including our facial mask that I introduced yesterday and other products. So that We can be much more hygiene oriented going forward. Luckily, we had this technology and as soon as something like Corona comes up, we were able to quickly make this mask. But also if you look at other types of product categories like think you fit for example is hard for us. To go to the department store, stand in front of mirror and try on different clothes and maybe somebody else had tried the five minutes ago. So I think if you have something like think you fit, you can stand in front of the mirror, and you can try and different clothes virtually right in front of the screen and you can Order online as well. And all this technology is now moving to our mobile as a companion app so that you can have the entire wardrobe at home, connected to a potential seller of the clothes,so we are sort of During this moving into more digital more online experience, so in terms of hygiene in terms of social distancing, all of these digital technology and also all of these analog technologies can be used together. Thanks for your few time, we can stay with the IP part. Chief Technology Officer tronics [UNKNOWN] And all the little coverage check it out at cn dot com [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]