Samsung’s robot lead names a date: ICRA 2027, Seoul, next May

Oh Jun-ho — head of Samsung Electronics’ future robot task force and an adviser to the company, founder of Rainbow Robotics, and the engineer behind HUBO — said Samsung Electronics plans to present a humanoid in a large exhibition space at ICRA 2027, which he said will be held in Seoul next May. Robotis also plans an exhibit. The remarks came in an interview with Robot Newspaper conducted on July 23 at Samsung’s Seoul R&D campus and published on August 18, 2026.

The attribution matters. This is Oh speaking, in his capacity as chairman of the Korea AI Robot Industry Association, about what Samsung plans. It is not a Samsung Electronics announcement, there is no product name, no specification and no commercial date. Treat it as the most specific public signal on Samsung’s humanoid timing to date, and nothing more than that.

The competitive clock this sets

Last week LG signed an MOU with NVIDIA and committed to unveiling a bipedal humanoid in the first quarter of 2027, running Isaac GR00T on Jetson Thor. A Samsung showing in May 2027 would put the two Korean conglomerates on stage within roughly two months of each other, which is close enough that neither can afford to slip.

It also explains the venue choice. ICRA is an academic conference, not a trade show. Unveiling there rather than at CES is a decision to be judged first by roboticists on capability rather than by press on production values — a lower-risk stage for a first showing, and a legible one for recruiting.

‘Do not underestimate China’

The strategic content of the interview is less about the date than about positioning. Oh’s WKC formula — world-class quality, Korean-standard service, competitive price — concedes that Korea will not win on unit cost against Chinese humanoid manufacturers and argues it can win on quality and service instead. That is the same position Korean manufacturers took in automotive and in appliances, and it worked both times, slowly.

His five-year list is more demanding than it sounds: an indigenous platform, factory-floor deployments that actually took, and domestic manufacturing AI and systems-integration capability. Korea currently has none of the three at scale, and the first-half financials from the listed robot sector — 134.3 billion won of combined operating loss — show how far the commercial base is from funding them independently.

Why it matters

Samsung has been the conspicuous silence in the humanoid race. It reorganised its robot business earlier this year, it holds a controlling position in Rainbow Robotics, and it has said almost nothing about what it intends to build. A named venue and a named month, even secondhand, is the first thing resembling a roadmap.

It is worth holding the caveat firmly. Interview remarks about exhibition plans are not commitments, and nine months is long enough for a plan to change. But the two largest Korean industrial groups now both have humanoid dates in the first half of 2027, and that is a schedule the component suppliers, the policy apparatus and the listed robot names will all be planning against.