Science ministry to open Physical AI Tech Week at Coex on Tuesday

The science ministry will open Physical AI Tech Week at Coex in Seoul on Tuesday, gathering more than 500 people from some 400 companies and institutions in the Physical AI Alliance for a two-day push that links technology, industry, policy and investment.

The Ministry of Science and ICT said Monday the event, which runs through Wednesday, is hosted by the ministry and organised by the Physical AI Alliance and the National IT Industry Promotion Agency. It is built around alliance networking, government briefings, global technology lectures, an exhibition with demonstrations, and a public talk concert.

The first day is Physical AI Alliance Day, where the government will set out the direction of its 2027 physical AI programmes and alliance members will look for cooperation that runs from technology development through demonstration to commercialisation.

In the morning, Krafton chief AI officer Lee Kang-wook, Nvidia Korea chief executive Jung So-young and Intel vice president John Healy will give special lectures on social intelligence robots, industrial digitalisation and physical AI. A cross-ministry briefing follows, with the science ministry joined by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries to present major physical AI projects in manufacturing, logistics, agriculture and ports. Alliance networking sessions in the afternoon will cover difficulties in research and development, the K-Physical AI full-stack strategy, industry demonstration tasks, data use, and standards, regulation and safety.

The second day is Physical AI Tech Day, held under the slogan "Intelligence into Action." Friendly AI chief executive Jeon Byeong-gon, MIT professor Kim Sang-bae and Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology professor Lee Kyu-bin will give keynote lectures on AI inference infrastructure, physical intelligence architecture and robot foundation models. Two afternoon technical sessions will range over AI factories, digital twins, physical AI standardisation, data and control, robot collaborative intelligence, next-generation physical AI models, agentic AI and data interoperability, with cases from industry.

A talk concert later on Wednesday will put the technology in plainer terms, chaired by Kwak Jae-sik, a chemist and science fiction author, under the theme "The public asks, researchers answer." About 70 students, business people and researchers will question the panel on what separates robots from physical AI and how it will change factories, hospitals and homes.

An exhibition will run throughout both days, with Neuromeka, Nota AI, Realworld, Maum AI, OnePredict, KT and LG CNS among the companies and research institutes showing AI semiconductors, data, manufacturing AI and robotics.

"I hope this Physical AI Tech Week becomes a place to share technology and industry trends in physical AI and to create new cooperation opportunities between the government, companies and research institutes," a science ministry official said. "I also hope the technology exhibition and talk concert give the public a chance to understand and experience physical AI more easily."