Korea's logistics giants are racing to deploy humanoid robots

HMHOctober 7, 2026

CJ Logistics and Lotte Global Logistics are running simultaneous humanoid robot pilots in Korean warehouses, backed by government funding and a national robotics strategy. The robots from Korean startup Robros are not fast yet, but the logistics industry is betting on 24-hour stamina, not speed.

Korea already has more industrial robots per worker than any country on Earth. Now it's running the most concentrated simultaneous humanoid pilot program in global logistics — and it wants to know if the economics work.

In September 2026, CJ Logistics deployed 2 dual-arm humanoid robots at its Olive Young distribution center in Yangji, Yongin, described as the first humanoids in a live logistics operation in South Korea. Barely a month later, Lotte Global Logistics is piloting Robros IGRIS-C at its Jincheon Fulfillment Center. BGF Retail, which operates CU convenience stores, is running its own tests.

Three of Korea's largest retail and logistics operators, running humanoid pilots at the same time. That's unusual even by global standards.

The robot in Lotte's warehouse

IGRIS-C is a full-body humanoid: 154 cm tall, 56 kg, built in-house by Robros: hardware, software, and control architecture. It trained at KwangWoon University's Robot Intelligence Research Lab, where it learned its first task for the Jincheon pilot: operating an auto-bagger.

The tasks are narrow, deliberately so. The pilot's goal is to prove it can work, not to prove it can do everything.

Pick up a T-shirt
Place it in a packaging bag
Press buttons on both sides of the machine simultaneously with both hands
And so on ...

Next tasks: shipping and packing, and longer-term, placing items in boxes and moving heavy boxes. The progression is careful. Robros CEO Oh Jeong-hyeon told Korea JoongAng Daily that if the Jincheon pilot succeeds, the plan is to expand to major logistics centers and evaluate commercialization potential.

Robros is small.

As of September 2026, it had sold 18 of 36 produced units, with 9 paid supply agreements in place. It has raised ₩5.6 billion — roughly $4.1 million USD — with Lotte Ventures as a strategic investor.

The economics problem nobody is hiding

Korea JoongAng Daily got unusually direct numbers from the CJ Logistics deployment. At launch, the robots operate at 30–50% of human worker speed. Each unit costs approximately ₩150 million — about $99,700 USD.

That's the honest version of humanoid logistics economics in 2026. Most humanoid robots are slower and expensive. And yet logistics operators keep signing pilots. The reason is in this statement from KwangWoon University Professor Park Su-han, who is advising the Lotte program:

"Slowness at this stage is not a problem. The real advantage is that robots can work 24 hours a day without fatigue."

Lotte Global Logistics is more direct about the success criteria: "If the efficiency doesn't surpass that of humans, there's no reason for adoption." That's the bar. Get to human-equivalent efficiency, and the math flips ... because the robot works three shifts.

Government money, national strategy

Neither of these pilots is purely commercial.

Both the CJ Logistics and Lotte programs are backed by government funding: CJ through the Ministry of Science and ICT's humanoid robot demonstration support initiative, and Lotte through the same program. Robros is also a member of the K-Humanoid Alliance, a national coordination body for the sector.

This is a policy bet: Korea has identified humanoid robotics as a strategic sector. Its reasoning is practical: the country has the world's highest manufacturing robot density, which means both workforce familiarity with automation and the industrial infrastructure to integrate robots faster than most.

The counterpoint is also true.

Korea has a serious logistics labor shortage. Humanoid robots, if they ever reach human speed, are not replacing workers who are difficult to find anyway. They're filling gaps that human hiring can't close.

What the race actually proves

The concentration of pilots matters for reasons beyond any single company. Multiple operators running similar tasks in similar conditions at the same time generates comparable data. What CJ learns at Olive Young and what Lotte learns at Jincheon, if shared — even indirectly through government programs or Robros' own training improvements — speeds up the entire sector's development curve.

The supply chain is also unusual.

Robros is Korean. Lotte Ventures is invested in Robros. Lotte Global Logistics is piloting Robros robots. Lotte Innovate is also running a separate program using Unitree G1 under the "Roi" brand in 7-Eleven stores.

Essentially, the group is building a humanoid stack from multiple angles simultaneously.

Counterpoint Research projects 80,000 humanoid robots in global logistics by 2030. Korea, already home to 3 simultaneous major pilots, is likely to be overrepresented in that number.

The gap between 30% of human speed and competitive deployment is still wide. But that gap is exactly what these pilots exist to close.