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10 hours ago
PolicyKR

Korea clears Robros to put 20 walking humanoids beside workers at chip, auto, shipyard and logistics sites

Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said in a press release on Oct 13 that its regulatory sandbox committee approved a trial in which Robros deploys 20 humanoid robots at sites run by Nepes, Sungwoo Hitech, HD Hyundai Samho and Delivery Lab, lifting a fencing rule written for fixed industrial robots. The same meeting allowed Maum AI to run a four-legged patrol robot on public riverside walkways for the first time.

1 sourceRobros
13 days ago
PolicyKR

Korea plans to put 200,000 AI robots into service by 2030, starting with more than 1,700 government purchases in 2027

South Korea's National Advanced Strategic Industry Committee adopted a plan on September 30 to deploy 200,000 AI robots by 2030, about 15,000 through public procurement and 185,000 through private adoption. The state will buy more than 1,700 units in 2027 for public safety, labour-short sites and education, and will widen purchases to public enterprises and local governments from 2028.

0 sourcesHyundai Motor GroupRainbow RoboticsDoosan RoboticsRobot Foundation ModelsFleet Orchestration Software
Sep 10, 2026
PolicyKR

Korea plans more than fivefold rise in humanoid core-parts budget to 62 billion won for 2027

South Korea's finance ministry said the 2027 budget proposal raises spending on sensors, actuators and humanoid batteries to 62 billion won from 11.6 billion won, after the three were named super-innovation leading projects in July. The money will fund technology development and field demonstrations, inside an industry ministry budget that rises 40.5% to 13.2573 trillion won.

5 sourcesRainbow RoboticsElectric ActuatorsHarmonic / Strain-Wave Gears
Aug 28, 2026
FundingKR

Korea's National Growth Fund puts 150 billion won into robot-hand maker Wonik Robotics in a 350 billion won raise

Wonik Robotics will issue 349.99998 billion won of convertible preferred shares to Korea Development Bank's Advanced Strategic Industry Fund and an IMM Credit Solution vehicle, according to the Financial Services Commission and a Wonik Holdings filing. The money funds a robot-hand factory and AX center in Wanju, R&D and acquisitions, while Wonik Holdings grants investors a put option if the unit does not list within six years.

1 sourceWonik RoboticsRainbow RoboticsDoosan RoboticsDexterous ManipulationTactile Sensing
Aug 14, 2026
PartnershipKR

LG and NVIDIA sign robotics pact; LG to unveil bipedal humanoid built with group parts in early 2027

LG Group and NVIDIA signed a strategic collaboration MOU on Aug. 13 covering robots, AI factories and mobility, LG Corp. said. LG will unveil a bipedal humanoid on Jetson Thor and Isaac GR00T in the first quarter of 2027 using LG Electronics actuators, LG Innotek sensors and LG Energy Solution batteries, and will test its wheeled CLOiD on a Tennessee washing-machine line this year.

2 sourcesLG ElectronicsNVIDIAHyundai Motor GroupRobot Foundation ModelsEdge AI Compute
Jul 17, 2026
ResearchKR

RSS 2026's top paper, FlashSAC, cuts humanoid walking training on one GPU from hours to minutes

FlashSAC, an off-policy reinforcement learning method from a team spanning Holiday Robotics, KAIST, KRAFTON, TU Darmstadt, KTH and others, won the Outstanding Paper Award at Robotics: Science and Systems 2026 in Sydney. The authors report training a Unitree G1 walking policy in about 20 minutes on a single RTX 5090, against about three hours for the standard PPO method.

5 sourcesUnitree RoboticsNVIDIARLSim-to-Real Transfer
Jun 29, 2026
PolicyKR

Korea makes physical AI one of three national mega projects, aiming for global top three in AI robots by 2030

Seoul on June 29 named physical AI alongside semiconductors and AI data centres as a national mega project and set out a '3M' plan for AI robots. The plan targets ten industry-specific humanoids commercialised by 2028, 1,000 robot deployments a year, data factories for ten sectors and a robot foundry in Saemangeum tied to Hyundai Motor Group investment.

4 sourcesHyundai Motor GroupNVIDIAGoogleRobot Foundation ModelsWorld Models
May 29, 2026
IndustryKR

Korea's AI robot alliance reaches 280 members in its first year, with shipyard and refinery humanoids aimed at 2027 and 2028

Korea's trade ministry said on May 29 that the AI robot division of its M.AX manufacturing alliance now has about 280 members and is running industrial humanoid pilots with HD Hyundai Heavy Industries, SK Energy and BGF. It also highlighted Korean robot foundation models, a 13 km/h humanoid lower body from KAIST and plans for a 500 billion won fund with a mandatory humanoid share.

0 sourcesRobotisHoliday RoboticsRainbow RoboticsVLARobot Foundation Models
May 18, 2026
ResearchKR

Korea launches 50.4 billion won humanoid programme with KIST and three LG affiliates, putting solid-state batteries in robots

Korea's science ministry on May 18 started a five-year, 50.4 billion won programme to build a national AI humanoid platform led by KIST, with LG Electronics, LG AI Research and LG Energy Solution among the partners. The plan includes a vision, touch, language and action model, an all-solid-state battery for humanoids and a field test of at least 20 robots in care settings.

2 sourcesLG ElectronicsVLARobot Foundation Models
Apr 29, 2026
BusinessKR

Doosan Robotics sets 2028 for an industrial humanoid after NVIDIA talks, then rebuilds its Europe base in Frankfurt

Doosan Robotics said on April 29 that it will launch robot solutions on its Agentic Robot O/S in 2027 and an industrial humanoid in 2028, after hosting NVIDIA's Madison Huang to discuss linking that software with NVIDIA's simulation and training stack. In May it moved its European office to Frankfurt with local repair and training, and in June it unveiled the PalletizHD+ palletiser in Chicago.

4 sourcesDoosan RoboticsNVIDIARainbow RoboticsSim-to-Real TransferFleet Orchestration Software
Mar 26, 2026
BusinessKR

Doosan Robotics' 2025 loss widens to 59.5 billion won as cobot arm sales halve, and it puts $16 million more into its US solutions arm

Doosan Robotics reported 2025 consolidated revenue of KRW 32.98 billion, down 29.6%, and an operating loss of KRW 59.47 billion, according to its DART filings. Sales of its core cobot arms roughly halved as North American demand fell about 50% under tariff uncertainty. On 26 March 2026 the board approved a USD 16.0 million capital injection into Doosan Robotics Americas, the former ONExia, to expand its factory on the back of a USD 14.9 million order backlog.

6 sourcesDoosan RoboticsRainbow RoboticsRobotisSim-to-Real TransferFleet Orchestration Software
Mar 23, 2026
PolicyKR

Korea opens bidding for a 9.7bn won humanoid robot safety certification centre in Daegu

South Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy on 23 March 2026 invited proposals to build a dedicated safety and security certification centre for humanoid robots, with up to 9,681 million won of government funding over 2026 to 2030. The lead institution must secure cash or in-kind backing from a Daegu-area local government, and by the final year the centre is expected to set three group standards and win KOLAS accreditation.

6 sourcesRainbow RoboticsDoosan RoboticsLG Electronics
Feb 27, 2026
BusinessKR

Hyundai pledges 9 trillion won for a Saemangeum hub that pairs a 30,000-robot plant with a 50,000-GPU data centre

Hyundai Motor Group agreed on February 27, 2026 to invest about 9 trillion won from 2026 in a robotics, AI and hydrogen hub at Saemangeum in North Jeolla. The plan includes a 400 billion won robot cluster with a finished-robot factory sized for about 30,000 units a year, a contract-manufacturing foundry and a parts complex, due in 2029, next to a 5.8 trillion won AI data centre scaled in phases to 50,000 GPUs.

8 sourcesHyundai Motor GroupBoston DynamicsNVIDIARobot Foundation ModelsSim-to-Real Transfer
Jan 8, 2026
PartnershipKR

Hyundai Mobis wins first robotics customer as Atlas actuator supplier to Boston Dynamics

Hyundai Mobis will supply actuators for the production version of Boston Dynamics' Atlas humanoid under a framework announced at CES on January 7, 2026, its first robotics customer. The Hyundai parts maker says actuators make up more than 60% of a humanoid's material cost, and plans to extend the tie-up to grippers, sensors, controllers and battery packs as Hyundai Motor Group targets 30,000 robots a year by 2028.

3 sourcesHyundai MobisBoston DynamicsHyundai Motor GroupElectric ActuatorsHarmonic / Strain-Wave Gears
Jan 4, 2026
ProductKR

LG enters the robot joint business with its AXIUM actuator brand as the CLOiD home robot makes its CES debut

LG Electronics unveiled the CLOiD home robot and launched LG Actuator AXIUM, a brand of motor, drive and reducer joint modules aimed at the wider robotics market, at CES 2026. The robot came with detailed joint counts but no price or date, and the actuator with no specifications or customer, leaving LG behind Hyundai Mobis, which named Boston Dynamics' Atlas as its first actuator customer three days later.

6 sourcesLG ElectronicsHyundai Motor GroupBoston DynamicsElectric ActuatorsVLA
Nov 16, 2025
BusinessKR

Hyundai Motor Group pledges KRW125.2 trillion in Korea to 2030, adding a robot foundry and a physical AI test center

Hyundai Motor Group said on 16 November 2025 it will invest KRW125.2 trillion in South Korea from 2026 to 2030, its largest domestic commitment and KRW36.1 trillion more than in the previous five years. The plan puts KRW50.5 trillion into future businesses including AI, robotics and hydrogen, and lists a robot manufacturing and foundry facility, a Physical AI Application Center and a petabyte-scale AI data center that is still under review.

7 sourcesHyundai Motor GroupBoston DynamicsNVIDIARobot Foundation ModelsSim-to-Real Transfer
Oct 31, 2025
PartnershipKR

Korea lines up more than 260,000 NVIDIA GPUs as Hyundai, Samsung and SK aim the compute at robots and factories

NVIDIA and South Korea said on 31 October 2025 that more than 260,000 NVIDIA GPUs will go into the government's sovereign cloud and the country's biggest industrial groups. Hyundai Motor Group and NVIDIA put about $3 billion behind a physical AI push that includes virtual testing of humanoid robots, while Samsung and SK plan AI factories with robotics and digital twin workloads.

7 sourcesNVIDIAHyundai Motor GroupSamsung ElectronicsWorld ModelsSynthetic Data Generation
Jul 28, 2025
M&AKR

Doosan Robotics pays $27.2 million for 89.59% of Pennsylvania integrator ONExia to sell US packaging cells built around its arms

Doosan Robotics agreed on 28 July 2025 to buy 89.59% of ONExia, an Exton, Pennsylvania robot integrator, for a final KRW 37.41 billion (USD 27.19 million) in cash, closing on 17 September 2025. ONExia has since absorbed Doosan's US sales arm, won Haleon packaging contracts and swung to a loss as the merged unit, while Doosan raised its stake to 94.12%.

6 sourcesDoosan RoboticsONExiaSamsung Electronics
Apr 10, 2025
PolicyKR

Korea forms K-Humanoid Alliance of about 40 groups, targeting a shared robot brain and sub-60kg, 50-joint humanoids by 2028

South Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy launched the K-Humanoid Alliance in Seoul on 10 April 2025, with about 40 companies, universities and other organisations signing a cooperation agreement aimed at making Korea the world's leading humanoid nation by 2030. The ministry expects more than 1 trillion won of public and private investment by 2030 and set 2028 targets for a shared robot AI foundation model and for humanoids under 60kg with more than 50 degrees of freedom.

3 sourcesRainbow RoboticsAeiROBOTHoliday RoboticsRobot Foundation ModelsElectric Actuators