The photo on May 21 shows Woochi Bot, a performance-style humanoid robot that assists the operations of an event or exhibition, developed by a domestic physical artificial intelligence (AI) company, Maum AI, at the headquarters of the firm in Seongnam City, Gyeonggi-do Province.
By Margareth Theresia
The era of physical artificial intelligence (AI) is one in which AI decides and acts beyond the digital space.
Physical AI perceives its surrounding environment through sensors, moves in a robotic outfit, makes decisions and executes actions on its own at a site. While conventional AI focuses on digital data such as text, images and speech, physical AI operates in the real world in sectors like manufacturing, logistics, security, defense and disaster response.
AI competitiveness criteria are also shifting from depth of knowledge to what it can safely perform in the real world.
The photo shows a humanoid robot that learns to insert and remove cans from a box at Maum AI's headquarters in Seongnam City, Gyeonggi-do Province.
Korea is accelerating its efforts to take the lead in the competition for global technological dominance. The Ministry of Science and ICT on May 21 hosted a media tour at Maum AI, a physical AI startup, in Seongnam, Gyeonggi-do Province, outlining its homegrown development of physical AI and unveiling the development site for the quadruped robot platform Jindo Bot.
Maum AI is at the center of technology drawing strong government attention. Its physical AI structure integrates AI foundation models, edge devices, autonomous robots and unified control solutions.
The company launched the country's first physical AI data factory that systematically collects, analyzes and learns from data produced by industrial robots on site.
At this site, AI models are trained using paired datasets of video data through a robot's camera and movement data. Operations are based on a three-stage learning cycle comprising virtual simulations, a real-world robot testing environment and commercial operational sites.
Maum AI CEO Yoo Taejoon said, "This is similar to the process through which a person initially struggles to grab objects but learns to do so naturally through repeated practice."
Physical AI has deeply penetrated industrial settings. In agriculture, self-moving machines that can navigate between trees in orchards while spraying pesticide have entered the commercial application stage. Equipment that autonomously clears waste at livestock facilities are also under development.
The photo on May 21 shows Jindo Bot, a domestically developed quadruped robot that recognizes vision, language and behavior, understands human instructions and moves autonomously, at the headquarters of Maum AI in Seongnam City, Gyeonggi-do Province.
The company's flagship product, the quadruped robot Jindo Bot, perceives its surroundings and navigates autonomously without direct human control. The gizmo can perform tasks required at industrial settings such as patrolling indoor and outdoor facilities, detecting intrusion, identifying fires and conducting nighttime surveillance.
Maum AI plans to expand the application of the Jindo Bot series beyond security, logistics and equipment inspection to defense and disaster response such as patrolling military facilities and scouting hazardous areas.
Its Woochi Bot, a performance-oriented humanoid robot, also demonstrates human-interaction capabilities by learning dance and movement.
Yoo said, "We've decided to expand our lineup to include humanoid robots that assist with caring for the elderly and children and are accelerating preparation."
