SEOUL — David Park has folded banquet napkins thousands of times during his nine years at the five-star Lotte Hotel Seoul. On a recent afternoon, he did so again, this time with cameras strapped to his head, chest, and hands, every motion fed into a database that will one day teach a robot to do the same.
Park is one of about 10 food-and-beverage workers at the hotel who are being wired up once a month by the South Korean startup RLWRLD (pronounced “real world”). The company is building an extensive library of human expertise — not just napkin folding, but how logistics workers grip and lift goods at CJ, and how Lawson convenience store staff in Japan organize food displays. The goal is to produce an AI software layer that can work in robots across a range of factories and work sites in the coming years, and eventually inside homes.
“I’ve been doing this about once a month,” Park said.
The push is part of South Korea’s bid to become a leader in “physical AI” — machines equipped with artificial intelligence and sensors that can perceive, decide, and act in the real world with some degree of autonomy. The government last month announced a $33 million project to capture the “instinctive know-how and skills” of master technicians into a database for AI-powered manufacturing, betting that robots can offset a workforce that is aging and shrinking.
Major corporations are aligned with the timeline. Hyundai Motor plans to introduce humanoids built by its robotics unit, Boston Dynamics, at its global factories starting with its Georgia plant in 2028. Samsung Electronics aims to convert all manufacturing sites into “AI-driven factories” by 2030, with humanoids and task-specific robots across production lines.
Yet the same technical advances are stirring anxiety among workers. Hyundai’s union warned in January that robots could trigger an “employment shock.” South Korean President Lee Jae Myung issued a rare rebuke, describing AI as an unstoppable “massive cart” and calling for unionists to adapt to changes that are “coming faster than expected.”
“Mastery of skills is ultimately a human achievement — even if AI can replicate existing abilities, the continuous development of craft will remain fundamentally human,” said Kim Seok, policy director at the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions. He said widespread robot deployments would risk “severing the pipeline” for skilled labor, and urged the government and employers to engage with workers over AI to win their buy-in and ease job fears.
The technical challenge RLWRLD is tackling lies largely in hands. Most robots, including Boston Dynamics’ Atlas, use task-specific two- or three-fingered grippers. RLWRLD is among a smaller group of companies developing AI for five-fingered robotic hands that replicate human touch. While such designs may not always suit factory needs, they could prove crucial as robots move into homes, where closer interaction with humans will be required, said Billy Choi, a professor at Korea University’s center for Human-Inspired AI Research.
The data collection process is relentless. After converting worker footage into machine-readable formats, RLWRLD engineers repeat the tasks themselves while wearing cameras, VR headsets, and motion-tracking gloves, capturing fine details such as joint angles and the amount of force applied, explained Song Hyun-ji of the company’s robotics team. That data trains test robots, often guided by “pilots” using wearable devices.
In a cluttered 34th-floor suite at Lotte Hotel, a wheeled robot with black, humanlike metal hands recently demonstrated its progress — gingerly lifting and placing cups at a minibar, though at one point knocking over a dish. A more advanced system shown in the company’s latest test footage: a humanoid carefully opens a box, places a computer mouse inside, seals it, and sets it on a conveyor belt.
Hospitality tasks, RLWRLD says, provide exceptionally valuable training data because they require the kind of precise, nuanced motions that could also expand robots’ utility in industrial settings. Lotte Hotel hopes robots will be ready for cleaning and other behind-the-scenes work by 2029, and it plans robot rental services for hospitality and other service industries, with a possible expansion into homes.
“If you look at the entire process of preparing for an event in back-of-house areas, we think humanoids might be able to take over about 30% to 40% of that workload,” Park said. “It will be difficult for them to replace the remaining 50%, 60% and 70%, which involves actual human-to-human interaction.”