South Korea opened a facility for collecting humanoid-robot training data in Daejeon on November 3. The Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials built the AI Humanoid Data Factory with the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute.
The facility initially operates 12 robots. Human operators guide them remotely while their movements and task information are recorded, creating material for training artificial-intelligence models. The opening demonstrations were therefore examples of data collection, not evidence that every task was performed autonomously.
Demonstrations included taking objects from a refrigerator, handling laundry, arranging a sofa and operating controls inside a vehicle. Trained models are subsequently tested on physical robots, with the resulting data fed back into further training.
KIMM says it intends to increase both the number of robots and the variety of tasks. The institute plans to open the facility to companies, universities and research organisations gradually from late 2027. Broader access is a future phase, rather than a service already available to outside users.
Archive illustration: a SARCOS Primus humanoid, not a robot at the Korean facility. Photo: SARCOS Primus humanoid robot by Jiuguang Wang, CC BY-SA 2.0. Image supplied at web resolution; display may be resized or cropped.
