Marc Raibert in Seoul: robot adoption may take a generation

Marc Raibert, founder of Boston Dynamics, told the opening of Seoul’s Smart Life Week on October 6, 2026 that much of the barrier to robot adoption is cultural rather than technical, and that workplaces may need a generation to adapt to robots. The remark landed at an event built by the City of Seoul to show physical AI as something residents can use now.

Smart Life Week runs October 6–8 at COEX in Gangnam under the theme “Designing Life with AI”. Financial News counts 515 participants: 312 companies, 102 institutions and 101 overseas cities. The Korea Times reported 529. Physical-AI exhibits cover 18,378 square metres, 46% more than last year, according to Financial News.

What did Raibert say?

In remarks reported in Korean by SmartBizN, Raibert said that not everything is a technology problem and that a large part is a matter of culture. Sites that bring in robots, he said, would need a generation to adapt their operations. On jobs he said some will be lost, but that robots are also a source of labour that countries badly need. He added that robots must be made safe enough to operate in open environments.

He also put the current progress in context. Financial News quotes him saying that technology needs long-term support and patience, and that the results on show began 15 years ago. Engineers once spent four to five months building a single motion into a robot, he said; reinforcement learning and simulation now let robots learn new motions far faster. In English remarks reported by The Korea Times, he described elder care as a likely use: “Even though some people may not like the idea of robots taking care of their elderly, I think this will be a very successful thing.” The paper reports he also expects home robots to learn chores by observing people.

Why does the generation timeline matter for Seoul?

Because the host is moving on a shorter clock. Mayor Oh Se-hoon used the opening to say physical AI will change city life, citing self-driving buses for early commuters, care robots and wearable robots for welfare services. The national government has set a 200,000-robot target for 2030. Seoul says it has spent ₩15.5bn on 60 robotics research projects since 2022 and is building a robot tech centre and venture town in Suseo for 2030–2031.

Raibert’s point does not contradict those plans, but it moves the hard part. Deployment targets count robots delivered. His argument is that the slow variable is how a hospital ward, a warehouse or a care home reorganises around a machine, and that is not something a procurement budget speeds up. The show floor made the gap visible: SmartBizN reports Boston Dynamics showed an Atlas mock-up, with training at Hyundai’s Georgia plant aimed at parts work by 2028 and assembly by 2030, while much of the hall was robot tennis, soccer and boxing.

The timing adds another layer. The same week, Boston Dynamics, the company Raibert founded in 1992, named an Amazon AI executive, Rohit Prasad, as chief executive. Raibert himself now runs the Robotics and AI Institute, which SoftBank has agreed to buy. His argument for patience comes from someone who has spent more than three decades getting legged robots from the lab into paid work.