South Korea’s LG Electronics will invest $3 million to acquire an about 5 percent stake in US-based Bossa Nova Robotics, as part of efforts to accelerate its new robot business, according to sources Tuesday.

An industry source told The Korea Herald that the Korean tech giant is going to make the investment this week to own the 5 percent stake in the San Francisco-based commercial robot developer, in a move that would expand the company’s current robot development portfolio.

It will mark LG’s third investment in the robot field this year following investments in domestic startups Acryl and Robotis. 

The US company builds service robots designed to help run large-scale retail stores efficiently by automating collection and analysis of on-shelf inventory data.

Walmart, the largest retailer in the US, has been testing Bossa Nova’s shelf-scanning robots at 50 stores across four states since last year.

The robots scan aisles for out-of-stock items, things that were put in the wrong place by customers, incorrect prices, and wrong or missing labels. They continuously go up and down the aisles of the stores, alerting human employees to the errors they see.

Equipped with 3-D imaging capability, the robots can also avoid obstacles such as used carts.

By investing in the US robot maker, LG appears to be expanding its robot portfolio under development, although it is not clear yet how much technological cooperation will be made between the two companies.

“If the financial investment leads to technological collaboration in the future, LG would add the service robot to its portfolio for commercialization,” said an LG official.

LG has so far unveiled seven kinds of robots in the works: the cleaning robot, guide robot, serving robot, mowing robot, porter robot, shopping cart robot and home hub robot.

The company is planning to commercialize the home hub robot later this year with a goal of designing the robot to connect and control LG’s home appliances.

LG is fostering the robot business as one of its future growth engines along with artificial intelligence.

Its Vice Chairman Jo Seong-jin said at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, “The robot business will start bringing profits to the company within two to three years.”

By Song Su-hyun (song@heraldcorp.com)