Korea clears humanoid robots for factory floors in regulatory sandbox push

The industry ministry said Tuesday that a state regulatory sandbox committee approved field trials for mobile humanoid robots across South Korea's main manufacturing and logistics sectors, lifting a safety-fence rule that had effectively barred machines designed to work alongside people.

At the sixth Industrial Convergence Regulatory Exception Committee meeting of 2026, the panel cleared four agenda items and 12 reports. The humanoid trial allows Robros to deploy 20 robots at semiconductor, automotive, shipbuilding and logistics sites to test high-difficulty tasks including semiconductor component cleaning, automotive body parts placement, shipbuilding staging component loading and refrigerated logistics packaging.

Until now, the Industrial Safety and Health Standards Rules required safety fences on the premise that industrial robots are fixed in place, which restricted the deployment of mobile humanoids sharing space with workers. The exception approval, with supplemented safety standards, makes on-site trials possible.

The committee also approved the first exception for a four-legged walking robot to patrol pedestrian paths. Maum AI will operate an autonomous quadruped patrol robot along riverside walkways and parks in Cheonan. The robot analyzes its surroundings in real time, broadcasts evacuation guidance when risks arise and transmits on-site video to a control system.

Separately, the committee reviewed a plan to rationalize regulations to spread M.AX, the ministry's manufacturing AI transition, and agreed on key tasks including establishing M.AX cybersecurity standards and setting technical standards for AI home appliances. Manufacturing AI adoption has made data forgery, falsification and hacking a growing concern, while small and midsized companies lack specific security standards and guidelines. The ministry plans to prepare tailored cybersecurity standards that manufacturers applying AI can immediately use by early 2028, after revising related laws. The appliance standard responds to the spread of "AI washing," in which products without real AI functions, or with only simple automatic controls, are advertised as AI appliances. The ministry aims to define AI home appliances and their technical levels, develop a draft standard by the end of this year and begin formal standard-setting procedures next year.

Trade, Industry and Energy Minister Kim Jung-kwan said AI technology is advancing faster than institutions can follow. "If institutions cannot keep up with the pace of technological change, we will inevitably fall behind in the great competition of the AI revolution," he said. He added that regulations must be innovated proactively in step with technological development, and that institutional bottlenecks blocking companies from applying new technologies to industrial sites must be removed quickly.