On the 21st, on the sixth floor of ROBOTIS's Magok headquarters in Gangseo-gu, Seoul, employees were in the middle of a test, shoving and shaking three "AI (artificial intelligence) Sapiens" Humanoid Robots from all sides. The robots wobbled but held their ground, and when they fell, they popped back up and stood on two feet like roly-polies. It is a process to verify their ability to regain balance after external shocks and to accumulate training data. AI Sapiens will hit the market within the year. It will be ROBOTIS's first time selling a bipedal Humanoid Robot in 11 years since 2015.
Kim Byeong-soo, the chief executive met at ROBOTIS headquarters that day, said, "I never imagined AI would evolve this quickly from handling language to the stage of actually moving real robots." He added, "Still, because we kept developing actuators for robots, we were able to respond 2 to 3 years ahead of others." A humanoid is an "actuator mass," with an actuator in each joint. This component determines locomotion, balance control, and object manipulation performance.
ROBOTIS originally developed actuators to build humanoids. Kim, who had swept domestic and international robot competitions, founded the company in 1999 and devoted himself to humanoid development. But when the market failed to open, the company halted development in 2015 and continued its business by supplying its multi-variety robot actuator "DYNAMIXEL" to research institutes and robot corporations around the world.
The restart of the halted humanoid development came in 2024. In the past, they calculated each joint angle one by one with mathematical models, but now AI learns how to walk, balance, and handle objects through Reinforcement Learning and imitation learning.
Kim said he realized the market shift three years ago when a Stanford University team in the United States implemented imitation learning using ROBOTIS actuators. "After talking with U.S. big tech companies, we charted our course over nearly two years," he said. "Requests that once amounted to 'put a camera on a robot arm' quickly expanded to two arms, new joint structures, and robot hands." Through this process, the company unveiled the bipedal AI Sapiens in April.
Before the bipedal humanoid, ROBOTIS tested market demand with wheeled robots and robot hands. The wheeled humanoid "AI Walker" and the five-finger robot released last year sold out early this year.
Kim predicted, "Hundreds of AI Walkers have been sold, but the bipedal AI Sapiens will sell in the thousands, 10 times more." Once a robot stands on two legs, it can be deployed in every space where people work, and because the load on the joints is smaller, the price can be set similar to or lower than the AI Walker.
ROBOTIS is moving beyond the actuator parts business to rebuild a complete humanoid in order to bundle and sell everything from robot joints to drive technology. The strategy is to prove actuator performance with a finished robot and provide the hardware and control technology needed for the robots customers want.
Kim said, "The main reason most domestic robots do not walk well is that they bought actuators that cannot accommodate AI," adding, "I have yet to see a specialized company that has shown robots moving properly with those parts."
He said the most important market in the actuator business is China. Of the roughly 13,900 humanoids produced worldwide last year, about 12,000 were made in China. "The biggest threat is Chinese companies," Kim said. "To be recognized as competitive, we ultimately have to be able to sell robot actuators in China." The actuators ROBOTIS sold in China in the second quarter alone already surpassed last year's annual sales volume of 80,000 units.
As a result, expanding production capacity enough to handle the flood of orders has emerged as the top priority. "We are currently unable to accept about half of incoming orders," Kim said. "We need to win this volume back quickly before it flows to Chinese companies."
ROBOTIS produced about 220,000 actuators last year and is increasing output by 60% to 70% this year. At its Uzbekistan plant, the company is pursuing actuator production, robot mass production, and the buildup of physical AI training data together.
ROBOTIS plans to raise its actuator production capacity to 3 million units a year over the long term. LG Electronics, the second-largest shareholder, is considering an equity investment in the plant, and discussions are underway with other corporations about participating in the investment.
On the faster-than-expected market opening, Kim said, "It's less that I feel good than that I feel nervous, like a once-unknown singer who is just about to step onto the stage." He added, "At this early stage of the market, the most important thing is to secure market share for actuators, the core components of humanoids, and to expand the ecosystem."
To that end, ROBOTIS has gone all-in by open-sourcing the design and drive technology of AI Sapiens. The strategy is to lead developers to build humanoids with ROBOTIS actuators from the start. Once control models and data are trained for a specific actuator, it is difficult to switch to other parts during development.
Kim said, "We want to show that by using open source and our actuators, even students can easily build humanoids. We will recruit undergraduate student clubs, assign development tasks, and publish the results."
Kim forecast that an era is coming in which each corporation will have its own robots. "Because the work data robots accumulate on the job translates directly into physical AI competitiveness, corporations will choose to build robots themselves rather than entrust this to outside robot companies," he said.
The recent bulk purchase of ROBOTIS actuators for sampling by Taiwan's Foxconn, the world's largest electronics contract manufacturer, aligns with this trend.
Kim said, "In the long run, the robot market will shift from selling machines themselves to renting robots like labor and paying for work done," adding, "We will become a 'humanoid solutions corporation' that delivers the humanoids corporations want, tailored from actuators to drive software and control technology."