Yujin Robot leads Korean project to put a humanoid in Lotte warehouses

Yujin Robot will lead a government-funded project to develop a humanoid robot for logistics work at Lotte Global Logistics and Lotte Hi-Mart, the two Lotte companies said on October 7, 2026. The project is tied from the start to named sites and a start date: Lotte Hi-Mart says the robot goes into its Icheon logistics centre from 2028.

The work was selected under the 2026 Robot Industry Technology Development Programme run by the Korea Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology (KEIT), which sits under the industry ministry. Yujin Robot is the lead organisation. CISO and the Korea Electronics Technology Institute (KETI) are research partners, and the two Lotte companies take part as demand companies that supply test sites. Neither company disclosed a budget.

What will the robot actually do?

Lotte Hi-Mart lists order checking, recognition of product models, options and barcodes, picking and packing. Lotte Global Logistics describes a longer chain it wants a humanoid to run continuously on its own: order confirmation, picking, quantity checks, stowing, transfer, barcode checks, packing and feeding the sorter. Its Jincheon, Yangsan and Icheon centres will serve as test beds, according to Herald Business. That breadth matters: a robot that only picks has to hand off to people or conveyors at every other step, while one that runs the full chain can be measured against a worker’s shift.

The stated aim, as quoted by Digital Daily, is to develop an industry-specific humanoid model in Korea and reduce dependence on foreign robots and AI models. It fits the government’s wider push, which includes a 200,000-robot deployment target for 2030 and state purchases of more than 1,700 robots in 2027.

How far along is Lotte with humanoids?

Lotte Global Logistics has run a humanoid trial before. In January 2026 it announced a test of Robros’s bipedal IGRIS-C robot for its Jincheon fulfilment centre under the Korea Institute for Robot Industry Advancement’s first humanoid demonstration programme, with Kwangwoon, Kyung Hee and Sogang universities. Herald Business reports that the trial covered apparel work from picking to polybag packing. Lotte Hi-Mart separately uses exoskeleton suits for appliance handling at its Daegu logistics centre under a government AI commercialisation programme, Financial News reports.

The new project is still research and development, not a purchase order. There is no unit count, no budget and no committed date for Jincheon or Yangsan; the 2028 date comes from Hi-Mart alone and applies to Icheon. Even so, it is larger in scope than most of the humanoid pilots in Korean factories so far, which as of early October involved a handful of robots on single lines. Whether a Korean-built logistics humanoid reaches the 2028 date will be one of the clearer checks on the country’s domestic-robot policy.