Samsung now has an artificial intelligence center in New York City -- its third in North America and sixth in total -- with an eye on robotics; a first for the company. It opened in Chelsea, Manhattan on Friday, walking distance from NYU (home to its own AI lab) boosting Samsung's hopes for an academic collaboration. The electronics giant is no stranger to academic team-ups: its UK research center is housed in Cambridge and led by the head of the university's Microsoft lab, Professor Andrew Blake. The same goes for rivals Sony, which tapped Carnegie Mellon for robotics research, and Toyota, which has poured a billion dollars into a research center for droids next to Stanford University. Samsung has quietly been investing in fledgling robotics startups (including the makers of a bot that cares for the elderly) through its SamsungNext Q Fund.