Robotis Hands Its Humanoid Robots to Korean University Students

Robotis, a South Korean robotics company, handed over its humanoid robot to university student clubs for a month so they could develop new movements on their own. It is the first time a South Korean robotics company has opened a fully assembled humanoid platform to students. The experiment was unveiled at a "K-Humanoid Ecosystem Declaration Ceremony" on August 31 at Robotis's headquarters in Seoul, where teams from Gachon University, Yonsei University, Seoul National University and Seoul National University of Science and Technology demonstrated the results.

Four AI Sapiens units, each 153 centimeters tall and weighing 34.8 kilograms, performed windmills, getting up from a prone position, taekwondo kicks and choreography from K-pop group ATEEZ's "Badd." The students trained all of these movements themselves, using Robotis's publicly available actuation and control code and its AI learning environment. They commuted to the headquarters daily during their month-long break, breaking two actuators and requiring more than ten mainboard replacements along the way. "Don't worry about breaking them, run them as hard as you want," was the company's policy.

"At school, we experiment with the robot tethered to safety lines because we're afraid of breaking it," said Jeong Hye-woo, a member of the Seoul National University robotics club. "This time, since we could fix parts right away, we were able to go through more failure-and-repair cycles and develop movements much faster." Chae Seung-jun, of the Seoul National University of Science and Technology robotics club, said Chinese-made humanoid robots often do not disclose precise component information. This makes it hard to close the gap between simulation and the real robot, he said, whereas Robotis's high control precision made that transfer easier.

The experiment is part of Robotis's strategy to build an open-source humanoid ecosystem. All 23 joints of the AI Sapiens use the company's Dynamixel actuators, and Robotis plans to eventually release its mechanical design drawings and circuit documentation so users can build and modify humanoids from the ground up. Robotis CEO Kim Byung-soo said the technology gap with China's fast-growing humanoid industry is now less than a year, and that the company plans to launch the "AI Sapiens K1" this month and begin mass-producing 1,000 units starting next year.