LG airport guide robot: the first airport robot left the terminal after a six-month pilot

The first guide robots inside an airport terminal

On 21 July 2017 LG Electronics put five guide robots and five cleaning robots into Incheon International Airport after five months of testing. The guide robots spoke Korean, English, Chinese and Japanese and gave flight and gate information. Asked for a gate, they would lead the way there. LG’s Song Dae-hyun said the company would “gradually expand” its robot business, starting with the Incheon pilot.

Withdrawn after six months, replaced by Airstar

The pilot ended in December 2017. Newsis reported that the ten robots ended service and left the terminal. From summer 2018, 14 Airstar robots began operating, built not by LG Electronics but by Puloon Technology and LG CNS. LG’s own 2020 material, however, says CLOi was first deployed at Incheon in 2018, so the records conflict.

The guide robot moved beyond the airport

The same guide robot was used at Starfield Hanam in 2017 and won a design award that year. LG later supplied guide robots under the CLOi GuideBot name, for example to the Busan X the Sky observatory in 2021. In October 2024 Incheon gave its new robot contract to Clobot and LG CNS, and in May 2026 it brought in 31 next-generation robots to succeed Airstar.

What remains after a pilot ends

An airport gives a robot clear jobs: wayfinding and multilingual help. Yet we could not find in public sources why the first robots left after six months, nor any study of how passengers and staff used them. The pilot ended, but how its results shaped the next robots was not recorded.

When a pilot ends, who records what was learned?

What we haven’t confirmed

• Why LG Electronics’ robots were not renewed after the pilot
• When the CLOi name was first used
• Whether Airstar used any LG Electronics hardware
• Unit price and any passenger study