Korea picks NC AI and LG to teach humanoids human movement

South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, with the Korea Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology, has selected a consortium led by NC AI, with LG Electronics as partner, to run the humanoid portion of the K-On-Device AI Semiconductor Technology Development Project. NC AI announced the selection on 4 September 2026.

NC AI’s stated task is a human-to-robot retargeting pipeline: taking recorded human motion and converting it into movement a humanoid can actually execute, given its joint limits, its own limb proportions and the requirement to stay balanced. It is also to supply the initial training datasets. The programme’s premise is a robot that decides and moves using processing carried on the machine, without a server in the loop.

Retargeting is the unglamorous middle of the humanoid problem. Motion capture of a person is cheap and abundant; a machine with different mass, different joints and no inner ear cannot simply replay it. Whatever else a humanoid needs, it needs that translation layer, and Korea has now funded one as industrial policy rather than leaving each manufacturer to build its own.

Neither the budget nor the duration was disclosed. It follows the 2.3 trillion won humanoid programme Korea’s budget ministry set out in August.