Daedong

Korea funds physical AI through at least four ministry programmes and several public-private alliances, and the largest awards disclosed so far have gone to established manufacturers rather than startups. Of KRW 444.9 billion in project budgets that MEKAWIRE has verified from company and institution releases, Daedong leads KRW 297.7 billion, Doosan Robotics KRW 98.9 billion and Neuromeka KRW 17.5 billion, and no project is led by a venture-backed startup; startups enter as consortium members, chip suppliers or through regulatory sandbox approvals.

Korean farm-machinery maker Daedong said in a press release on Oct 15 that its multi-purpose AI electric tractor project has been selected as a K-GX signature project, in the farm-machinery electrification track of the government's Korea Green Transformation strategy, which the government presented on Oct 7 with plans for KRW 200 trillion of public money and more than KRW 790 trillion of climate finance over ten years. Daedong will develop a 55 kW (about 74 hp) tractor with a battery pack for four to five hours of work, a single motor paired with a continuously variable transmission, integrated thermal management for battery, motor and inverter, and a vehicle control unit, aimed at autonomous tillage and spraying in orchards; the company has so far worked on a 35 kW battery-swap compact electric tractor. It plans to mature the core technology by 2027, build production and run field trials in Korea and abroad in 2028-2029, and start sales in 2030, on a line using AMRs, painting robots, fast charging and AI vision inspection. Co-CEO Won Yu-hyun said the company would expand investment from development through manufacturing. Daedong launched a vision-AI level-4 autonomous tractor in April that it plans to bring to North America next year, and it leads the consortium for the agriculture ministry's KRW 254.6 billion national agricultural AX platform. MEKAWIRE's database tracks agricultural robotics mainly through U.S. startups such as FarmWise and Advanced Farm Technologies; Daedong's plan is one of the few roadmaps from an incumbent tractor maker that ties electrification and autonomy to a dated timeline.

Daedong said in a press release on Sept 9 that it has been named lead organisation for the unmanned farm-robot track of the K-On-Device AI Semiconductor programme run by Korea's Ministry of Trade and Industry, a project worth about KRW 43.1 billion that runs from July 2026 to December 2030 with 14 companies, institutes and universities. The work is split three ways: Daedong Robotics builds the robot platform and modular implements with Rainbow Robotics, Koras Robotics, Hana SS, the Korea Institute of Robotics and Technology Convergence and two agricultural agencies; fabless chipmaker Mobilint and the Korea Electronics Technology Institute develop an AI system-on-chip suited to farm conditions; and Mobilus, Daedong Agtech, Suresoft Tech and Seoul National University build the autonomous-work AI and computing platform. The chip is meant to run driving, crop recognition and obstacle avoidance on the robot itself, the company said. Core technology and prototypes are due in 2026-2028, followed by on-farm trials of spraying, harvesting, transport and crop scouting in 2029-2030; Daedong plans to extend the chips to tractors, rice transplanters and combines. The overall chip programme, managed by KEIT, carries about KRW 800.2 billion to 2030 for ten customer-specific AI chips. It is the second national programme Daedong leads this year after the KRW 254.6 billion national agricultural AX platform, which MEKAWIRE noted in its Oct 15 K-GX story.

Daedong said in a press release on Sept 7 that it demonstrated AI farm machines, precision-farming tools and a management platform to about 40 farm-work contracting managers from local NongHyup cooperatives on Aug 28 at the Rural Development Administration's reclaimed-land research centre in Gimje, as a first step toward commercialising a precision farm-work contracting service. The service combines AI machinery, a platform that handles farmers' requests, field data, crew and machine scheduling and progress, and precision tools such as soil analysis and variable-rate fertilising; the demonstration also showed autonomous AI tractor work, drone crop analysis and spraying and a transport robot. Daedong cited NongHyup figures showing cooperatives running contract-farming operations rose from 222 in 2024 to 290 in 2025, about 31%, and upland contract area from 161,000 ha to 191,000 ha, about 19%. The service is one of the business models of the national agricultural AX platform project, a KRW 254.6 billion programme in which Daedong leads the consortium, and the company plans to build an operating model centred on South Jeolla and commercialise it next year. For MEKAWIRE readers the shift is from selling machines to selling robot-performed work: it is Daedong's second government-backed AX programme on our pages after the KRW 43.1 billion on-device AI chip project for unmanned farm robots it leads.

Daedong said in a press release on Sept 1 that its HX1400-AI tractor, launched in Korea in April, has been designated a new-technology agricultural machine by the Rural Development Administration. The certified technology is a vision-AI level-4 autonomous tractor platform: cameras and an on-board AI processor recognise field boundaries, the attached implement and obstacles, map the plot, generate a work path and stop the machine on their own when something goes wrong, with an app for remote start, stop, return and progress tracking. Earlier autonomous farm machines mostly followed GNSS waypoints, and Daedong says this is the first commercial tractor in Korea to use AI perception for autonomous work. The company trained the models on more than 5 million images gathered during development, keeps collecting field data after sale and pushed its first over-the-air update in August, which it describes as a software-defined tractor. Designated machines qualify for priority purchasing by local governments and public bodies, state subsidies and loans and preference in public procurement. The certification follows the same status for Daedong's autonomous rice transplanter in 2021 and its autonomous transport robot and combine this year. MEKAWIRE has now covered five Daedong releases since August, from the AgRoid humanoid with Rainbow Robotics to the K-GX electric tractor, and this one matters most commercially because the designation opens public-procurement and subsidy channels for the AI tractor at home.

Daedong said in a press release on Aug 20 that it has signed an MOU with Daegu Metropolitan City on reshoring and factory AX investment and will turn its Daegu plant, which builds about 200 tractor specifications for export to some 70 countries, into a physical-AI production site under four strategies running to 2029: reorganising production and logistics, a new AX line, converting existing lines, and a data and AI operating system. On the new line, AI will sequence production and AMRs and robot cells will automate material supply, engine and transmission assembly and cab and tyre handling across 15 main processes; 12 robots go into the paint shop; camera-based AI inspection will catch missing parts and oil leaks, and the line will run automatic software and system checks on finished machines. The company expects regular tractor capacity to rise from 21,000 to 35,000 units a year, about 67%, and main-body painting capacity from 35,000 to 63,000 units, 80%, with paint time per unit falling from 2.3 to 1.9 minutes. No investment figure was given. Vice chairman Won Yu-hyun said the model would later spread to Daedong's other plants worldwide. The company is targeting KRW 3.59 trillion of consolidated revenue in 2030, against KRW 1.4847 trillion in 2025 according to its own company profile, which makes the plant upgrade a test of whether an incumbent machinery maker can fund AI and robot automation from its core business.

Korean farm-machinery maker Daedong said in a press release on Aug 13 that it has signed a co-development agreement with Rainbow Robotics to commercialise AGROID, an agricultural robot that puts Rainbow's two-armed humanoid upper body on a Daedong autonomous base built for greenhouses. A first prototype is finished and is being tested on tasks such as tomato harvesting, the company said. Daedong leads development, with its units Daedong Robotics and Daedong Agtech handling the driving platform, path planning and crop-recognition and harvest-decision AI; Rainbow Robotics supplies the harvesting arms, precision control, AI control and digital-twin links, and the two will run certification and field trials together. AGROID grows out of the strawberry-picking robot Daedong showed at CES 2025 and is meant to swap end effectors for scouting, leaf removal, harvesting and transport; Daedong aims to deploy it as the core robot in a fourth-generation AI greenhouse planned in South Jeolla in 2028 under the national agricultural AX platform. The deal was signed at Daedong's Seoul office by Rainbow Robotics CEO Lee Jung-ho and Daedong Robotics CEO Kang Sung-chul among others. In MEKAWIRE's records it is one of the first commercial farm applications announced for Rainbow's humanoid hardware since Samsung Electronics became its largest shareholder.