South Korea is easing safety rules written for fixed industrial robots, clearing the way for the country's first on-site test of humanoid robots performing actual manufacturing tasks in the same space as human workers.
The Ministry of Trade and Industry said on the 13th that it held the sixth meeting this year of its regulatory sandbox committee on industrial convergence, reviewing exemption requests in artificial intelligence, robotics and energy. The committee granted a testing exemption to Robros for its project deploying humanoid robots at semiconductor, automotive, shipbuilding and logistics sites.
Robros will deploy 20 AI-equipped bipedal humanoid robots at industrial sites run by Nepes, Sungwoo Hitech, HD Hyundai Samho and Delivery Lab. At the chip plant, the robots will remove contaminants from circular components used in back-end packaging. At the auto plant, they will position car body parts.
At the shipyard, the robots will stack the metal pieces used to anchor elevated work platforms to a ship's hull during construction. At the logistics site, they will move refrigerated packaging units. The robots will move through spaces identical or adjacent to those of human workers, recognizing and picking up objects before carrying and stacking them.
Current safety standards for industrial robots have been the main obstacle to putting humanoid robots on factory floors. Existing rules assume fixed robots and require safety fences and other barriers to separate human and robot work areas. That framework is difficult to apply to humanoid robots, which must move freely and share space with people.
The government approved the test on the condition that risk assessments and risk-reduction measures required by the Ministry of Employment and Labor are carried out. The test will identify hazards that can arise when workers and humanoid robots operate in the same space and verify whether safety measures work. The resulting data will be used to develop safety standards and regulatory changes needed for wider industrial adoption of humanoid robots.
The test is notable for expanding the role of humanoid robots beyond simple transport into actual production work. Performance and adaptability will be tested simultaneously across different work environments, from precision cleaning in chipmaking to positioning auto parts and stacking shipbuilding materials. The ministry intends to use the project to accelerate the AI transformation of manufacturing under its M.AX (Manufacturing AI Transformation) initiative.
Robots are also moving beyond factory walls. The committee approved patrols by four-legged walking robots on pedestrian paths for the first time. Maum AI will test a self-driving quadruped patrol robot on riverside walking trails and in parks in Cheonan. The robot will use AI to analyze its surroundings in real time, broadcast warnings when it detects a hazard, and transmit video and location data to a control system.
The ministry is also moving to update rules to match the spread of AI on factory floors. It plans to establish cybersecurity standards tailored to manufacturing sites by early 2028 to counter data tampering and hacking. By the end of this year, it will also develop a draft standard for AI technology levels in home appliances to curb so-called AI washing, in which products with no actual AI functions or only basic automated controls are marketed as AI products.
"AI technology is advancing so fast that regulation struggles to keep up," Trade Minister Kim Jung-kwan said. "We need to move quickly to remove the regulatory bottlenecks that stand in the way of companies developing new technologies and applying them at industrial sites."