South Korea Opens State-Run Data Factory to Train Humanoid Robot AI

The AI Humanoid Data Factory opened on November 3 at KIMM's headquarters. It was built with the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) and is supported by the Ministry of Science and ICT, according to a release issued through the National Research Council of Science & Technology.

The project targets one of the main constraints on general-purpose robots: there is far less physical task data than the text and images used to train language models. KIMM said the facility will give Korea the infrastructure to produce and build up large volumes of humanoid task data at home, reducing its dependence on overseas data and AI models.

The system records arm and leg movements as well as full-body coordination. That data trains AI models meant to help robots understand human instructions and their surroundings. The trained models are then run on physical robots for evaluation, and the results feed into the next round of training. KIMM said it wants the models to work across different robot platforms, including the K-Humanoid standard platform, rather than being tied to a single machine.

At the opening ceremony, the robots collected data on household tasks such as taking items out of a refrigerator, handling laundry and arranging a sofa. They also performed an industrial task, working buttons and levers inside a vehicle. KAIROS, a humanoid robot KIMM is developing, demonstrated precise object handling and imitation of full-body motion.

"Securing large volumes of high-quality robot task data is essential to national technological competitiveness," KIMM president Seog-Hyeon Ryu said in the release.

The facility is run by KIMM's Global TOP Strategic Research Group for Self-Growing AI Humanoids, led by Dr. Chan Hun Park. It is linked to the AI humanoid mission within K-Moonshot, a national strategic research programme. The release did not disclose a budget.

KIMM plans to add more robots and tasks over time. It will open the facility to Korean companies, universities and research institutes in stages, starting at the end of 2027.