Korea's humanoid parts plan starts with actuators, where only 19.7% of drive parts are made at home

South Korea has named actuators, humanoid batteries and AI sensors as new national flagship projects, in a plan released on Nov. 11 Korea time through the Ministry of Economy and Finance. The actuator part is the core of it. The plan puts ₩100 billion into robot core-part R&D from 2027 to 2029, ₩30 billion of it in next year's budget proposal, and sets a year-by-year path: core technology in 2027, test records in 2028, mass production starting in 2029, and large-scale production and exports in 2030.

The plan's own numbers point at a different bottleneck. The government says the world produces about 15,000 humanoids a year, China makes 86% of them and Korean startups make about 1%. One percent is roughly 150 robots, and at 20 to 50 actuators each, that is 3,000 to 7,500 actuators a year. Hesai, one Chinese supplier, shipped 23,405 modules in the third quarter alone. A Korean actuator line that starts in 2029 needs customers abroad, and the R&D money does not buy them.

The gap is widest where the cost is

Actuators drive a robot's arms, legs and fingers, and the plan puts them at 60% to 70% of a humanoid's cost, against 10% to 20% for the robot hand. Korea's overall localization rate for robot parts has barely moved, from 41.1% in 2016 to 44.9% in 2023, according to Korea Electronics Technology Institute figures the plan cites. For drive parts, actuators included, it is 19.7%. The medium-term goal is 80% for core robot parts, which Newspim reports as a 2030 target.

The technical targets are steep. The government wants actuators with five times today's torque for the same weight, from 35 to more than 165 Nm/kg, a lifespan of more than 1 million cycles instead of 300,000, and a cut in their share of a robot's weight from 45% to 30% or less. It also plans to help auto-parts makers switch to robot parts and to steer the National Growth Fund toward actuator makers' factories.

Batteries and sensors get smaller sums

Humanoid batteries get ₩13.3 billion in the 2027 proposal, split between 8 projects for higher-performance commercial cells and 10 for solid-state cells, aimed at a full 8-hour shift. Standards come in 2027 and commercial products in 2030. On-sensor AI chips get ₩49.8 billion over 2027 to 2030.

The plan itself names the strongest counterargument to the volume problem. It cites the import restrictions on foreign-made robots that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission announced on July 29. If those rules push robot makers selling in America away from Chinese hardware, a Korean actuator line in 2029 would find the buyers that Korea's own humanoid makers cannot supply.