Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) said on the 15th that the research team of Kim Seung-jun, a professor in the AI department, has set up the "human-centered physical artificial intelligence (AI) interaction research center (PAIR-HCI Center)" within the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and has begun full-scale cooperation. Physical AI is technology that enables robots or machines to perceive their environment and perform physical actions in the real world beyond digital space.
The PAIR-HCI Center is part of the "overseas excellence research institute cooperation hub establishment project" supported by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF). From Jul. 2025 to Dec. 2030, it aims to pool the research capabilities of GIST and MIT to develop "human-centered physical AI interaction technology" that people can trust and use.
The research center, which opened in May, will serve as a collaborative space for regular research meetings by the two universities' researchers, mid- to long-term visiting research, joint experiment design, researcher exchanges, and joint symposia. In May, Professor Kim Seung-jun's team visited on site for a month to share research results and technology trends with MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) in areas such as software-defined vehicles, Autonomous Driving, robots, extended reality, and inclusive interfaces, and discussed directions for follow-up joint research.
On the 6th to the 10th, they held a joint workshop with MIT researchers who visited Korea to attend the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2026) held in Seoul.
The two universities plan to broaden the scope of research to real-world applications such as collaborative robots, Autonomous Driving cars, humanoids, and mobile XR.