Korea's public humanoid data factory opens with 12 robots and stays closed to outside users until late 2027

Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT opened the country's first data factory built only for bipedal humanoids on Nov. 3, at the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM) in Daejeon. KIMM built it with the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI). People teleoperate the robots through tasks while the facility records the robots' movements and the work, data meant to train AI that lets humanoids do those tasks on their own. It runs 12 humanoids today, Newspim and inews24 reported.

The first customer is KIMM's own robot. KIMM plans to open the factory in stages to companies, universities and research institutes from the end of 2027. Its data also goes into training KAIROS, the humanoid KIMM is developing: KIMM plans to unveil KAIROS hardware and version 1.0 of a humanoid foundation model next year, and to have the robot doing car-plant processes and housework by 2030, Maeil Ilbo reported. The ministry's stated aim is to cut Korea's dependence on foreign robot data.

Half the planned fleet, a tenth of LG's floor space

KIMM had earlier said the factory would run 25 humanoids on about 1,000 square meters, according to Maeil Ilbo, so it opened with about half that fleet. Korea's private benchmark is bigger. LG Electronics built its Data Factory on its former Yangjae R&D campus in Seoul across four floors and 10,000 square meters, and said in August it would raise the number of robots there to the hundreds within the year. At the opening, KIMM's humanoids took items out of a refrigerator, handled laundry, tidied a sofa and worked the buttons and levers inside a car.

The strongest case for the public site is that it may be the only one Korean startups can use. LG has said it will train its own robots first and treats paid access for outside customers as a medium- to long-term option, as Robrief reported last week. A Korean team without its own data factory has no shared source until KIMM opens its doors, and by then KAIROS will have had the data to itself for about a year.