South Korea has opened its first dedicated humanoid AI data factory, bringing 12 robots together at a research facility designed to collect the real-world movement data needed to train more capable machines.
The facility opened on November 3 at the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM) in Daejeon. Developed with the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), it occupies approximately 1,000 square metres across two floors and forms part of a government-backed effort to develop domestic humanoid AI technology.
Inside the facility, human operators remotely control humanoid robots through a range of physical tasks. Demonstrations at the opening included retrieving items from a refrigerator, handling laundry, arranging furniture and operating buttons and levers inside a vehicle. The robots record movements and task information that researchers can use to train vision-language-action models, which connect visual inputs and instructions to physical actions.
The process is designed as a feedback loop. Models trained on the collected data are deployed back onto physical robots for testing, and the results help refine subsequent training. The robots shown at the opening were teleoperated during data collection, rather than performing those demonstrations autonomously.
KIMM plans to expand the facility from 12 to 25 humanoids and increase the range of tasks represented in its datasets. Access is expected to open gradually to domestic companies, universities and research institutions beginning in late 2027.
The initiative is supported by South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT as part of its K-Moonshot humanoid research programme. It also supports development of KAIROS, a domestically developed humanoid platform that researchers demonstrated at the opening. A completed version of KAIROS is scheduled for unveiling in April 2027.
