[THE INVESTOR] Samsung Group will focus on artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things for its future technology, the company said on July 12.

Among 32 research projects led by the group between 2014 and 2016 which are aimed at accelerating technology innovation, six were related to AI, Korea’s top conglomerate added.

The move comes amid heightened public interest in AI following the high-profile matches between Google’s AI program AlphaGo and South Korean Go champ Lee Se-dol earlier this year.

Samsung said four projects involved IoT -- a concept in which all tangible objects are connected to the internet and can identify themselves to other devices in order to exchange necessary data for improved efficiency and convenience.

Samsung Electronics, the tech arm of the conglomerate, has been making efforts to use the IoT platform in its products, including smart TVs.

Samsung, the world’s top TV maker, said the platform installed on smart TVs can link to other home appliances that support IoT technologies, such as security cameras. Users can also link the TV with smartphones to freely activate other IoT devices.

For this year, Samsung announced that it will delve into “on-device deep learning” and apply the technology to various areas such as autonomous flying robots and ultrasound devices.

Deep learning is a new area of machine learning research where a computer emulates the way the human brain draws out patterns from data and processes it, the conglomerate said.

(theinvestor@heraldcorp.com)