Science ministry opens data factory to teach humanoid robots how to work

South Korea opened its first data production facility dedicated to bipedal humanoid robots on Tuesday, a site where people remotely operate machines to record the movements and tasks that will be used to train their artificial intelligence.

The AI Humanoid Data Factory opened at the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials, built by the institute in cooperation with the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, the science ministry said. The facility is meant to cut reliance on foreign datasets and give domestic humanoid AI research its own supply of work data.

Humanoids need to learn how to handle objects and understand their surroundings before they can carry out tasks on their own in homes or factories, and that requires large volumes of data on how robots move and work. At the factory, operators control the robots remotely and the resulting motion and task data is collected.

The institute is currently running 12 humanoids and plans to add more robots and more types of tasks in stages. The data feeds AI training so that robots can carry out work in line with human instructions and their surroundings, and the trained models are then applied to real machines to verify performance, with the results fed back into training.

At the opening ceremony, the institute demonstrated data collection through remote operation and by imitating human movement. Several humanoids took objects out of a refrigerator, handled laundry and tidied a sofa, and also worked buttons and levers inside a car to gather data on industrial tasks. The institute also showed precision object manipulation and full-body motion imitation by KAIROS, a domestic humanoid it is developing.

The factory is part of the Autonomy-Growing AI Humanoid Global TOP Strategic Research Group, a program led by the machinery institute that runs from May 2025 to April 2030. The institute plans to open the facility to industry, academia and research institutions in stages from late 2027.

"Securing high-quality robot task data on a large scale is the core of national technological competitiveness," said Ryu Seok-hyun, president of the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials. He said the institute would accelerate development of KAIROS through cooperation among industry, academia and research bodies and contribute to strengthening the competitiveness of the domestic physical AI industry by opening the data factory in stages from late 2027.

Kim Seong-su, head of the research and development policy office at the Ministry of Science and ICT, said public data infrastructure is important to support joint research on AI humanoids. He said the government would expand the data production and use base available to industry, academia and research institutions in stages and focus on securing independent humanoid technology.