The AI Humanoid Data Factory, built with the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), runs 12 humanoids across about 1,000 square meters on two floors of a KIMM building.
It plans to expand to 25 robots.
Researchers steered humanoids by remote control at the opening ceremony, guiding them to pull items from a refrigerator, handle laundry, tidy a sofa and work the buttons and levers inside a car.
Each recorded motion trains vision-language-action models, AI systems that turn what a robot sees and is told into movement.
Trained models go back into the robots for testing, and data from those runs is fed back into training, according to the institute.
"Securing high-quality robot task data on a large scale is the core of national technological competitiveness," said Ryu Seog-hyeon, president of KIMM.
The institute said the facility is expected to reduce dependence on foreign data and AI models.
The project is backed by the Ministry of Science and ICT under K-Moonshot, a program applying AI to 12 national missions, including humanoids.
The ministry aims to field a world-class national humanoid platform within three years, with a Next-X Humanoid Challenge set to make its final pick from 2027.
The plan includes buying 1,080 domestic humanoids and raising the local share of core parts to 80 percent from about 45 percent.
KAIROS, the humanoid KIMM began building little more than a year ago, showed precise object handling and mimicked whole-body human motion at Tuesday's ceremony.
Two months earlier, four of six units on a Seoul stage swung their arms to calisthenics music, their feet barely leaving the floor.
KAIROS version 1 is due in April 2027, months before the factory is set to open to outside companies, universities and research institutes.
AJP Takeaways
- The Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials opened its AI Humanoid Data Factory on Nov. 3, 2026, with the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute. It is South Korea's first facility dedicated to producing training data for two-legged humanoids.
- The factory runs 12 remotely operated humanoids on about 1,000 square meters and plans to expand to 25. KIMM plans to open it to companies, universities and research institutes in stages from late 2027.
- The project is part of the Ministry of Science and ICT's K-Moonshot humanoid mission. The Ministry of Planning and Budget earmarked 2.3 trillion won through 2030 on Aug. 27, 2026, to grow the humanoid industry.
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