The performance offered a candid look at how far South Korea has come — and how far it still has to go — little more than a year into a state-backed effort to close the humanoid gap with China and the United States.
Four of the six KAIROS units on display performed.
Each had to be lowered from hangers holding it upright and worked into a starting posture before it could move.
"We started humanoid research a little over a year ago," said Park Dong-il, director of the Advanced Robotics Research Center at the Korea Institute of Machinery & Materials (KIMM), with a rueful smile.
"We got here from nothing, on the software, hardware and AI the institute has built up over a long time."
The arms came up to shoulder height and no higher.
Each command took a beat to register before the machine began to move, and the joints turned as if they were dry.
One unit stood in a white body with hansam on its wrists, the long white sleeves used in talchum, Korea's traditional masked dance, and slowly traced the steps on the beat.
Its feet stayed almost firmly on the floor.
The audience clapped through every crank and sway, almost as if coaxing the machines along. However feeble the movements looked, nobody in the hall laughed.
Humanoid industry leaders are well past that stage.
China's Unitree Robotics has demonstrated G1 humanoids performing coordinated kung fu routines and other highly dynamic movements, while Boston Dynamics' Atlas has performed a "Ghost Rabona" — a feint followed by a cross-legged football kick requiring the robot to leave the ground and regain its balance.
KAIROS is not there yet, and Park said so plainly.
The robot, whose name comes from the Greek word for a decisive or opportune moment, is KIMM's attempt to create a homegrown humanoid platform at a time when physical AI is emerging as the next global technology race.
Korea's broader K-Moonshot initiative uses AI to accelerate science and technology development and includes humanoid robots among 12 national missions. The government formally launched the program this year with the goal of doubling research productivity by 2030 and achieving its key missions by 2035.
KAIROS itself grew out of work launched in May 2025 by KIMM's Global TOP strategic research group for self-growing AI humanoids.
The rationale is straightforward: a country confronting a shrinking workforce does not want to depend entirely on foreign humanoid platforms once robots begin moving from laboratories into factories, logistics centers and eventually homes.
KAIROS stands about 170 centimeters tall, weighs roughly 80 kilograms and has 29 degrees of freedom, according to the institute.
The version shown Monday is V0.7. V1 is scheduled for April 2027 and V2 for 2030.
Each carries a different combination of components, including different reducers and motors, and is designed to test a different role and set of trade-offs, Park said.
"We prepared a scenario with unit zero handing me a glass of water as for my dry throat. Technical difficulties barred us from the skit toady," Park said. "Units one, two, three, four — every one of them does something different."
The aborted glass-of-water demonstration underscored the size of the challenge.
Walking, balancing and moving an arm are only the beginning for humanoids expected eventually to perceive their surroundings, make decisions, manipulate objects and work safely around people.
Zhang Byoung-tak, a professor of computer science and engineering at Seoul National University who heads its Humanoid AI Robot Center, opened the forum by arguing that humanoid AI represents the next major wave of artificial intelligence after generative and agentic AI.
Generative AI gave machines the ability to understand and produce language and images. Agentic AI moved toward systems capable of setting goals and using tools within digital environments, Zhang said.
Humanoid AI takes that evolution into the physical world.
It gives intelligence a body capable of perceiving, judging and acting in real environments rather than remaining behind a screen.
The global race is accelerating quickly.
China has built a broad humanoid hardware ecosystem backed by its enormous manufacturing supply chain, while U.S. companies are pushing advances in AI models and sophisticated robot control.
Korea's researchers acknowledge they are trying to catch up rather than defending a lead.
Park Chan-hoon, director of KIMM's AI Robotics Institute, has described the effort as a "humanoid one-team" bringing together roughly 20 teams including Seoul National University and LG Electronics to develop an indigenous platform. He has argued that Korea needs to master the technology from "head to toe" rather than rely on foreign systems.
KAIROS is intended to become the common platform on which those technologies can be integrated and tested.
But the clearest message came at the end of the robots' performances.
The researchers who built KAIROS joined the machines on stage, bowed and asked lawmakers and government agencies in the audience for sustained support.
"Humanoid development is a race against speed, and we have pulled our schedule forward as far as we can," Park Chan-hoon said.
"We need at least 3 billion won ($2.2 million) budgeted, and we will answer it with results."
The engineers behind him were dressed head to toe in black T-shirts and jeans. Their robots may still toddle, but their eyes were steady.
AJP Takeaways
- KAIROS managed a slow dance on a Seoul stage Monday, a modest display beside the acrobatics already demonstrated by Chinese and U.S. humanoids.
- Korea began developing the homegrown humanoid little more than a year ago in a bid to build its own hardware, software and physical AI platform.
- Researchers say speed is now critical as KAIROS moves toward V1 in 2027 and V2 in 2030.
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