Korea's first defence AX hub opens in Pangyo, with Ajou University and the Army focusing on physical AI and robots

Ajou University said in a statement on its newsroom on Oct 13 that the Army's Pangyo AX hub, which it runs, opened on Oct 12 at the Gyeonggi Startup Campus in Seongnam as the first of the defence ministry's defence AI-transformation centres, with about 150 officials from the defence, science and SME ministries, the Army, IITP, the national AI strategy committee and Gyeonggi Province attending.

The university said the hub has a physical-AI lab, a GPU server room for large-scale training, a secure data zone and a seminar room for company partners, and will research spatial perception and digital twins, robot motion data collection and learning, and joint missions between different robots.

First-year projects already under way with the Army are a battlefield environment for physical-AI training and testing, an explosive-ordnance-disposal mission system and voice-command autonomous robot control.

The defence ministry's programme, run with IITP, sets up five centres nationwide: Hannam University builds the shared AI infrastructure, while Ajou, Korea University, KAIST, Seoul National University and UNIST run centres for the Joint Chiefs, Army, Air Force and Navy, with KRW 19 billion budgeted this year.

In MEKAWIRE's Korean coverage, defence has become a second demand pillar for physical AI next to manufacturing, as shown by Maum AI's landmine-detection quadruped trial this week.