Korea to let delivery robots into apartments with sector-specific rule exemptions

South Korea's land ministry said in a press release on Oct 23 that it will give mobile robots sector-specific regulatory exemptions and operating standards so that delivery robots can move through apartment complexes and inspection robots can work on construction sites, at airports and in rail facilities.

The measures listed in the release include leaving robot waiting, charging and maintenance areas out of a building's floor-area-ratio calculation, communication links between robots and building equipment, robot-specific safety verification and a separate type approval for airport and rail inspection robots, operating standards for construction sites, parking lots and logistics facilities, a pedestrian-level "mobility walking map" of crossings, obstacles and entrances, and a shared public-private platform.

The ministry presented the plan at the presidential Regulatory Rationalisation Committee that afternoon together with autonomous-driving reforms, among them a licensed category for driverless service operators by 2027, a permit fast track to put more than 3,000 test vehicles into pilot cities from 2027 and a commercial robotaxi model to be tried first in Gwangju.

It said a special act on the safe use and commercialisation of mobile robots, tabled by lawmaker Han Byung-do on Sep 3, is targeted for enactment this year. MEKAWIRE context: this is the ministry's second robot measure in a week, after the construction robotics innovation forum it launched on Oct 20, and it goes beyond the sidewalk and patrol-robot rules set out in MEKAWIRE's explainer on Korea's patrol robots, where makers such as Neubility operate.