WIM Advances to NVIDIA Inception Grand Challenge Semifinal: Single Jetson Orin AGX SoC Handles AI Inference and 1ms Real-Time Control Together
WIM Inc. has confirmed its spot in the semifinal of the NVIDIA Inception Grand Challenge, a NVIDIA Inception Program competition for AI startups across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. What stood out in the judging wasn't the result itself, but WIM's architecture: handling AI inference and real-time robot control together on a single SoC.
The competition drew more than 500 startups from across the APAC region — including Korea, Southeast Asia, Australia, and Taiwan — narrowed through a first cut to the Top 150 and a second cut to the Top 80 before reaching this semifinal stage of the Top 40, with WIM heading to the Korea semifinal stage on August 27. The Top 20 that advance from the semifinal will pitch on the main stage at NVIDIA AI Day in Singapore.
Most industrial robot controllers keep the computer that runs AI inference physically separate from the controller that drives the motors. Communication between the two devices inevitably introduces latency, which in turn drives up system complexity and build cost. WIM's robot controller, W-RC (WIM Robot Controller), processes 275 TOPS (INT8) of edge AI computation and 1ms (1kHz) real-time control simultaneously on a single SoC built on the NVIDIA Jetson Orin AGX. Its software platform, PLEM, applies this architecture identically to collaborative robots, 6-axis articulated arms, and humanoids through a ROS 2-based interface.
This architecture isn't built on hardware specs alone. WIM has secured real-time performance at the software level as well, through EtherCAT driver optimization, an in-house PREEMPT_RT kernel that guarantees a 1ms fixed cycle on NVIDIA Jetson, and improved path-generation quality based on cuMotion. (Related tech blog: Is PREEMPT_RT Enough? Validating Real-Time Performance on Jetson Orin →)
WIM is a partner in the NVIDIA Inception Program and a member of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy's K-Humanoid Alliance. The company was selected for the Ministry of SMEs and Startups' TIPS and DIPS programs for its development of an SoC-based controller for collaborative robots, and currently has six patents pending for its SoC-based robot control technology. On the business side, WIM has raised investment from the global accelerator Plug and Play as well as POSTECH Holdings, CNT Tech, and the Korea Credit Guarantee Fund, and has secured supply contracts for W-RC and PLEM with industrial sites including RES and SL Corporation.
WIM CEO Woojin Jeon said, "On a global stage run directly by NVIDIA, we have a chance to show WIM's control technology," adding, "We will complete a general-purpose control stack that scales from manipulators to mobile robots and humanoids, so developers can build the AI robots they want without having to think about control."
Founded in 2021, WIM is an edge AI robot control platform company that supplies technology for operating collaborative robots, 6-axis articulated arms, and humanoids through a single controller — its industrial robot controller W-RC, built on the NVIDIA Jetson Orin AGX, and its ROS 2-based software platform PLEM. The company is headquartered in Daegu.