Robros

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Robros (Korean: 로브로스) is a South Korean robotics company, founded in September 2020 and headquartered in the Seongdong district of Seoul, that develops humanoid robots and service-robot platforms with the stated mission of "blurring the boundaries between humans and robots." Its flagship product is the IGRIS-C, a 154 cm, sub-60 kg bipedal humanoid that won first place in bipedal walking and static obstacle avoidance at the 24th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids 2025) in Seoul.^[1][10] The company, led by chief executive Ryan Ro (Korean name Noh Seung-jun), first drew public attention with its automated cafe baristas Mixie and Porty, deployed in 2023 at the unmanned Better Than Yours store in eastern Seoul, then pivoted in 2024 and 2025 toward general-purpose humanoid hardware.^[3][5][16] Robros has raised approximately US$10.6 million in disclosed funding, is a member of the K-Humanoid Alliance, and in June 2026 was the only robotics company to receive an innovation award at Korea's NextRise 2026 startup fair.^[14][15][22]

Robros belongs to the K-Humanoid Alliance, a government-backed Korean consortium launched in April 2025 with the goal of building a national humanoid hardware and AI stack by 2028. At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 2026, Robros exhibited IGRIS-C at the alliance's HUMANOID M.AX pavilion in Las Vegas, where it presented the platform to potential overseas customers in North America and Europe.^[1][4]

History

Founding and early years

Robros was founded in September 2020 in Seoul by Ryan Ro, whose Korean name is Noh Seung-jun and who serves as the company's chief executive officer.^[16][17] A graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Ro first entered the robotics business through Alien Robot, an early Korean coffee-robot company, before setting out to build service robots of his own.^[17] Some English-language databases such as Crunchbase list the founding year as 2022, but Korean startup registries including NextUnicorn and RocketPunch record the incorporation of the legal entity in September 2020.^[3][16][17]

The startup was conceived as a service-robotics company at a time when South Korea's hospitality and food-service sector was under acute labor pressure, with rising minimum wages and a shrinking pool of part-time workers. Robros set out to design end-to-end automation systems in which robots could not only perform individual tasks but also coordinate with each other to operate an entire small business with minimal human intervention.^[3][5]

In its first years of operation the company focused on cafe automation, prototyping a pair of complementary arm robots that could share workspace and divide the labor of preparing hot and cold beverages. Engineering work concentrated on the integration of off-the-shelf collaborative arms with proprietary control software, ordering kiosks, ingredient dispensers, and an inventory-management back end. Robros assembled a multidisciplinary team covering mechanical design, embedded software, control engineering, and industrial design, and around mid-2022 it shifted its business model from selling robots to operating them and selling the resulting service directly.^[5][17]

Better Than Yours cafe (2023)

In 2023 Robros opened Better Than Yours, an unmanned cafe in the Seongsu neighborhood of eastern Seoul, as the public debut of its automation platform. The cafe was staffed entirely by two robots:

• Mixie, a multi-arm system that prepared ice cream and mixed beverages.
• Porty, a three-jointed arm that pulled espresso shots and combined them with ice cream to make affogatos.

According to Robros, the two units could collaboratively produce more than seventy distinct recipes, with customers able to specify toppings, espresso strength, and additional shots through a self-service kiosk. The pricing engine calculated the cost of each drink down to the won based on the exact ingredients used. An iced coffee at Better Than Yours sold for 2,463 won (about US$1.79 at the time), compared with roughly 4,500 won at nearby human-staffed cafes. The store operated 24 hours a day, with approximately two hours of manual maintenance per day for cleaning and restocking. Robros stated that during quiet periods the robots would dance to the cafe's background music as a form of ambient entertainment.^[5]

Better Than Yours subsequently won an iF Design Award 2024 in the Interior Architecture category, with a design team credited as Jinyoung Kim, Haelyeon Ra, and Mina Yun. The iF Design entry described the cafe as an "experiential venue" that combined low-cost vending economics with the spectacle of watching two robots collaborate in real time, and identified its target markets as Asia and North America.^[6]

The early cafe work gave Robros direct field data on continuous-duty robot operation, human-robot interaction, and the engineering trade-offs between cost, reliability, and dexterity, experience that the company later applied to its full humanoid program. By 2024 the company was prototyping a next-generation robot cafe in which imitation learning robots would take on chores such as cleaning and dishwashing in addition to drink preparation.^[3][5][18]

How did Robros build its humanoid program?

In parallel with its service-robot deployments Robros began developing a general-purpose humanoid platform. The result was the IGRIS-C, a mid-size bipedal robot intended for research, embodied-AI experimentation, and light industrial work. According to the company, IGRIS-C was designed in-house across the full technology stack, from mechanical design and system integration through assembly, production, control software, and AI.^[1]

IGRIS-C was entered in the bipedal walking and static obstacle avoidance category at the 24th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids 2025), held September 30 to October 2, 2025 at COEX in Seoul, where it placed first in the adult-size division.^[10][11] Earlier reporting and some company materials referred to the event as taking place in late September of the prior year, but the 24th Humanoids conference was the Seoul edition held from September 30 to October 2, 2025.^[10][11] The award validated the platform's locomotion controllers, developed using reinforcement learning in simulation, against international academic benchmarks and helped position Robros as a credible bipedal hardware vendor in a market dominated by larger Korean and U.S. firms.^[1][10]

Robros walking-technology lead Lim Dae-gyu framed the result as an early milestone rather than a finished capability, telling reporters, "We self-implemented reinforcement learning-based walking technology, but we are only at the beginning stage."^[10] CEO Noh Seung-jun added that "bipedal walking technology is essential for utilizing human-centered infrastructure," a rationale for pursuing a legged form factor over wheeled mobile bases.^[10]

At an AI-humanoid forum held at the Korea Exchange in Seoul on July 10, 2025, Ro set an aggressive benchmark for the program, declaring that Robros would "build a Tesla Optimus-class robot with our own technology."^[12] At the same event he announced plans for IGRIS-C to complete a 4.3 km walking demonstration through central Seoul in the fall of 2025 as a public proof of the platform's reliability, and said the company was already fielding inquiries about deploying its robots on battery and semiconductor production lines.^[12]

How much funding has Robros raised?

According to Crunchbase, Robros had raised approximately US$4.14 million in disclosed funding across early-stage rounds by early 2026, with a Seed VC-II round of about US$2.9 million closing roughly ten months before the early-2026 reporting date. Disclosed early investors include HB Investment, Lotte Ventures, STIC Ventures, and the convenience-store and retail conglomerate GS Retail, plus several additional undisclosed participants. The mix of corporate investors, notably GS Retail (which invested in the operator of the Seongsu Better Than Yours cafe) and the consumer-goods group Lotte, reflects Robros's origins as a service-robotics company with strong commercial-deployment partners in Korean retail.^[3][7]

In 2026 Robros raised a further round, reported at around 10 billion won (roughly US$7 million), led by KB Investment, the venture arm of Korea's KB Financial Group.^[14][20] PitchBook lists the company's cumulative disclosed funding at approximately US$10.6 million, with backers including HB Investment, KB Investment, Lotte Ventures, Mirae Asset Securities, and Korea's government-backed Tech Incubator Program for Startup (TIPS).^[22] KB Investment director Yoon So-jung said the firm invested because "Robros has internalized both hardware and AI technology while consistently advancing its capabilities," and expects the company to reach market faster than many competitors.^[14]

What did Robros show at CES 2026?

On January 6, 2026 (Las Vegas local time), Robros exhibited IGRIS-C at the HUMANOID M.AX Alliance pavilion at the Consumer Electronics Show 2026 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The booth was part of a coordinated showing by members of the Korean alliance, sharing floor space with peer companies including Rainbow Robotics, Holiday Robotics, and Doosan Robotics.^[1][4]

At the show Robros demonstrated IGRIS-C under a safety harness on a tethered rig, focusing on bipedal walking, dexterous-hand manipulation, and the platform's imitation learning workflow. CEO Ryan Ro told reporters that the company would "pursue exports primarily to universities and research institutes in North America and Europe," framing IGRIS-C as a research-grade platform for embodied-AI labs that need a full humanoid body for data collection and policy training rather than building one in-house.^[1]

Products

IGRIS-C

IGRIS-C is Robros's flagship humanoid robot and the company's primary commercial offering as of 2026. The platform was launched as a research and industrial product in 2025 and is targeted at universities, government-funded research institutes, and applied-research groups in manufacturing and logistics.^[1][2] It is the successor within a broader Igris line that also includes an earlier model referenced by the company as IGRIS-A.^[12]

Mechanical specifications

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As reported by Humanoid.guide and the company's own product page, IGRIS-C uses an aluminium primary structure and 5-finger hands. The actuator strategy combines low-reduction-ratio (20:1 or less) quasi-direct-drive motors at the hip and knee, which provide up to 150 N·m of pitch torque for walking, with tendon-driven actuators in the hands. The tendon system routes cables from a small number of motors through coupled joints, allowing each ~300 g hand to grasp payloads up to 3 kg while remaining lightweight enough to mount at the end of a long arm.^[1][2][8] Counting both the 31 body degrees of freedom and the active hand joints, IGRIS-C exposes 43 total degrees of freedom.^[19]

At a maximum of 3.6 km/h, IGRIS-C is slower than the fastest humanoids from Unitree and Figure, a trade-off Robros makes deliberately: analysts summarizing the company's position describe IGRIS-C as "built for reliability at job sites, not speed records."^[19] Robros hardware-design lead Kim Seung-yeon said IGRIS-C "aimed to be a versatile humanoid platform applicable to various work environments," achieving stability "through balance in proportions and weight."^[10]

Sensing and compute

IGRIS-C carries two front-facing RGB cameras for stereo color vision and a rear-facing depth sensor, providing 360-degree situational awareness for indoor mobility. Onboard processing is split between an Intel Core i7 NUC, which handles general computation and locomotion control, and an NVIDIA Jetson module that runs perception and policy networks. The platform runs Linux and exposes interfaces compatible with common robotics frameworks for academic users.^[1][2][8]

How does IGRIS-C learn to walk and grasp?

Locomotion on IGRIS-C is built around a reinforcement learning controller trained in simulation and transferred to hardware, with bipedal locomotion policies tuned for indoor surfaces and obstacle avoidance. For manipulation tasks, Robros uses an imitation learning workflow in which a human operator wears a "master hand" teleoperation rig, demonstrates a task multiple times, and then trains a policy that allows the robot to reproduce the behavior in similar environments. The company has said it is also advancing vision-language-action (VLA) models and whole-body control so that IGRIS-C can generalize across tasks rather than execute a single scripted routine.^[14][21] This workflow is a fit for Robros's stated target customers in embodied AI research, who use the robot as a hardware substrate for collecting data and validating policies rather than as a final-form factory automation product.^[1][8]

Awards and recognition

• First place, bipedal walking and static obstacle avoidance (adult-size division), 24th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids 2025), Seoul, September 30 to October 2, 2025.^[10][11]

Applications

Robros markets IGRIS-C as a universal humanoid platform for the "Physical AI era," with three primary use cases:

• Research and academia. University and government labs that need a full-size, full-degrees-of-freedom humanoid body to test foundation models, manipulation policies, and locomotion controllers.
• Industrial pilots. Applied-research groups in manufacturing, logistics, and semiconductor fabrication evaluating humanoid form factors before committing to large-scale deployments. By mid-2026 the company said it was running proof-of-concept trials at industrial sites and, according to industry reporting, had begun piloting Igris units at LG facilities.^[19][21]
• Public demonstrations and education. Showcase deployments at trade shows, science centers, and corporate innovation labs.

The company has stated that the design intentionally emphasizes a flatter head profile and compact proportions to reduce overhead-clearance issues in indoor research environments, and uses a deliberately simple face design to position IGRIS-C as a non-anthropomimetic research tool rather than a consumer-facing humanoid.^[1][8]

Better Than Yours cafe automation

Before the humanoid program, Robros's primary product was an automated-cafe stack centered on the Better Than Yours store concept. The system integrates two collaborative arm robots, Mixie and Porty, with a self-order kiosk, a beverage and ingredient dispensing system, an inventory back end, and a cleaning routine, packaged as a turnkey cafe deployment. Key operational characteristics include:

• 24/7 operation with approximately two hours of daily manual maintenance.
• Per-recipe pricing accurate to the won based on actual ingredient consumption.
• A library of more than seventy drink recipes that can be customized in real time.
• Pricing roughly half that of comparable human-staffed cafes in the same Seoul neighborhoods.^[5][6]

The cafe stack remains in operation and won an iF Design Award in 2024, but Robros has signaled in its CES 2026 communications that the humanoid program is now its primary growth vector.^[1][6]

Technology and design philosophy

Robros describes its competitive position in terms of a "full-cycle technology stack": rather than focusing on a single layer such as motors, control software, or AI, the company designs and integrates all of mechanical hardware, system integration, assembly and production, control firmware, and AI policies in-house. This vertical integration is presented as enabling tighter co-design between actuators, control loops, and learned policies, particularly for the high-torque hip and knee joints used in walking.^[1]

The firm emphasizes three engineering themes across its product line:

• Precision control actuators. Low-reduction-ratio drives at the major leg joints provide back-drivability and accurate torque control, enabling reinforcement learning-based controllers to deploy reliably from simulation to hardware.
• Intuitive human-robot interaction. Both the cafe robots and IGRIS-C are designed for safe operation in shared spaces, with a deliberately understated industrial aesthetic and self-explanatory user interfaces.
• Real-time motion prediction and situational adaptation. Proprietary algorithms allow the robots to react to dynamic environments, for example IGRIS-C avoiding static obstacles in the Humanoids 2025 evaluation, without explicit reprogramming for each new scene.^[1][10]

This philosophy mirrors the broader Korean humanoid strategy articulated by the K-Humanoid Alliance, which prioritizes lightweight, sub-60-kg bodies with high degrees of freedom and shared AI foundation models over the heavier, more powerful platforms favored by some U.S. and Chinese competitors.^[4] Robros's own framing of IGRIS-C as a machine "built for reliability at job sites, not speed records" is a concrete expression of that strategy, betting on Korea's manufacturing and quality-control depth rather than on raw locomotion performance.^[19]

Industry partnerships

K-Humanoid Alliance

Robros is one of the industrial and academic members of the K-Humanoid Alliance (also referred to as HUMANOID M.AX), launched on April 13, 2025 in Seoul. The alliance was inaugurated at a ceremony attended by more than 350 participants, including Korean Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Ahn Duk-geun and Seoul National University President Yoo Hong-lim.^[4] The consortium began with dozens of members and, by the time of the CES 2026 pavilion, was reported to encompass roughly 260 participating organizations spanning AI institutes, robot manufacturers, component suppliers, and universities.^[1][4]

The Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE) is supporting the alliance with a planned investment of approximately US$770 million (KRW 1 trillion) through 2030, including roughly US$150 million (KRW 200 billion) allocated for 2025 alone for R&D, infrastructure, and shared testing facilities. By 2028 the alliance aims to deliver a shared "robot AI foundation model" for the Korean industry, lightweight humanoid hardware specifications (under 60 kg with 50+ degrees of freedom, 20+ kg payload, and 2.5+ m/s mobility), and dedicated humanoid-class semiconductors and batteries.^[4]

IGRIS-C, at 56-60 kg and 31 body DOF, sits within the alliance's hardware envelope, and Robros's participation in the CES 2026 pavilion was an explicit element of the consortium's international-marketing strategy.^[1][4]

Seojin Automotive manufacturing partnership

On November 10, 2025, Robros signed a memorandum of understanding with Seojin Automotive (서진오토모티브) for the joint development and commercialization of humanoid robots, pairing Robros's AI-based robot control with Seojin's automotive-grade manufacturing and quality management. Under the plan, Robros handles overall robot design, software, and advancement of reinforcement-learning and control algorithms, while Seojin takes on assembly, mass-production processes, quality management, and in-house actuator manufacturing. The roadmap calls for co-developing waist-joint actuators in 2025, trial-producing roughly 100 IGRIS-C prototype units in 2026, and dividing roles from 2027 onward, with Robros focused on control and AI and Seojin on component localization and volume production.^[13]

Seojin Automotive CEO Koh Man-yoon said the partnership would "focus on implementing robots usable in actual industries based on Seojin's manufacturing capabilities," describing humanoids as "core technology for creating environments where people work alongside machines, including manufacturing and logistics."^[13]

Other alliance members

Robros's peers within the K-Humanoid Alliance include Korean robotics companies such as Rainbow Robotics, Aeirobot, Holiday Robotics, We Robotics, BlueRobin, Angel Robotics, Neuromeka, LG Electronics, Doosan Robotics, and HD Hyundai Robotics, alongside semiconductor and battery suppliers Rebellions, DEEPX, SK On, LG Energy Solution, and Samsung SDI. Academic partners include Seoul National University, KAIST, Korea University, Yonsei University, and POSTECH.^[4]

Reception and market position

Industry analysts have classified Robros, alongside Holiday Robotics, Aeirobot, and WiRobot, as one of a cluster of newer Korean robotics startups building AI-driven general-purpose humanoid platforms, distinct from the more established legged-robot specialists like Rainbow Robotics. Coverage from regional outlets including AVING News, Seoulz, and Interact Analysis frames Robros as part of a broader Korean push into humanoid hardware that leverages the country's strengths in semiconductors, batteries, and consumer electronics rather than competing directly on raw scale with U.S. or Chinese humanoid programs.^[1][9] One 2026 analysis of the Korea-versus-Unitree race argued that South Korea's advantage "lies not in individual robot superiority but in manufacturing infrastructure," where Samsung, LG, and the country's battery makers "already know how to scale hardware nobody else can scale."^[19]

The Humanoids 2025 podium finish for IGRIS-C is regarded as one of the firm's strongest validating signals to date, as the IEEE-RAS Humanoids conference is one of the most established academic venues in the field. Combined with the iF Design Award 2024 for Better Than Yours, the company has received recognition for both its hardware engineering and its industrial design.^[1][6][10]

On June 19, 2026, Robros was the only robotics company to win an innovation award at NextRise 2026, one of Asia's largest startup fairs, held at COEX in Seoul and co-hosted by the Korea Development Bank and the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA).^[14][15] By that point the company said it held the most projects awarded under the Korea Robot Industry Promotion Agency's (KIRIA) humanoid demonstration program and was expanding field trials across manufacturing, logistics, and semiconductor sites.^[14][21] Accepting the award, CEO Noh Seung-jun said it "recognizes Robros's AI humanoid technology and commercialization capabilities."^[14]

See also

• IGRIS-C
• Humanoid robots
• K-Humanoid Alliance
• Rainbow Robotics
• Holiday Robotics
• Doosan Robotics
• Consumer Electronics Show
• Imitation Learning
• Reinforcement learning
• Bipedal locomotion
• Embodied AI
• Physical AI

References

1. "Robros Showcases Humanoid Platform 'IGRIS-C' at CES 2026 HUMANOID M.AX Alliance Pavilion." AVING News. ↩
2. "IGRIS-C Humanoid Robot by Robros." Humanoid.guide. ↩
3. "Robros." Crunchbase. ↩
4. "'K-Humanoid Alliance' Launches to Lead Next-Gen Robotics Revolution." WOWTALE. ↩
5. "How robotics reflect shift in S. Korea's food industry." The Korea Herald. ↩
6. "BETTER THAN YOURS - ROBOT cafe." iF Design Awards 2024. ↩
7. "Robros." CB Insights. ↩
8. "ROBROS IGRIS-C Korean humanoid robot at #ces2026." ARMdevices.net. ↩
9. "Korea Humanoid Robotics 2026: The Hidden Supply Chain Winner." Seoulz. ↩
10. "Robros wins IEEE-RAS Humanoids competition." ZDNet Korea, October 2, 2025. ↩
11. "Humanoids 2025: 24th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots." Official conference site. ↩
12. "Robros CEO Noh Seung-jun: 'We will build a Tesla Optimus-class robot with our own technology.'" News1, July 10, 2025. ↩
13. "Seojin Automotive and Robros sign MOU for joint humanoid robot development." Robot Newspaper (irobotnews), November 10, 2025. ↩
14. "KB Investment-backed Robros wins NextRise innovation award, sole robotics firm." Seoul Economic Daily, June 23, 2026. ↩
15. "Robros, Backed by KB Investment, Wins NextRise 2026 Innovation Award." NEWSTOP (The Vista). ↩
16. "Robros company profile." NextUnicorn. ↩
17. "Noh Seung-jun (Ryan Ro), CEO of Robros: career and education." RocketPunch. ↩
18. "A 'real' robot cafe opens: imitation-learning robots handle cleaning and dishwashing too." Unicorn Factory (Money Today), September 22, 2024. ↩
19. "South Korea's Humanoid Robots Are Racing Unitree. Nvidia Hasn't Picked a Korean Partner Yet." Revolution in AI, June 2026. ↩
20. "This week in investment: Robros and Roai, Physical AI smiles." Startup Recipe. ↩
21. "Robros wins the sole robotics-sector NextRise 2026 innovation award." The Korea Economic Daily (Hankyung), June 23, 2026. ↩
22. "Robros: Valuation, Funding & Investors." PitchBook. ↩