KAIST

KAIST is South Korea's national science and engineering university, set up by the government in 1971 in Daejeon. Wikipedia gives 704 faculty and about 12,300 students for 2024. Its place in humanoid history comes from one lab: the Humanoid Robot Research Center under mechanical engineering professor Oh Jun-ho, who started walking-robot work in 2000.

The lab's line ran from the legs-only KHR-0 in 2001 through KHR-2 in 2004, the first complete humanoid, to HUBO, released in January 2005 with fingers that moved independently, which ASIMO's did not. Albert HUBO, with a Hanson Robotics Einstein head, followed the same year, and the lighter HUBO 2 in 2008 and 2009. Rainbow Robotics, which Oh founded with his students on 10 February 2011, took over manufacturing; by 2012 it had built 15 HUBO 2 Plus units and sold them to labs in Korea, the US, Japan, Singapore and China.

The high point was 6 June 2015, when Team KAIST's DRC-HUBO+, which walks but can also kneel and roll on wheels in its shins, won the DARPA Robotics Challenge finals and the USD 2 million prize. KAIST itself does not sell robots; the commercial thread continues at Rainbow Robotics (KOSDAQ 277810), where Samsung Electronics became the largest shareholder in early 2025.