Bigwave Robotics said on Sept. 8 it will join hands with Space Manufacturing Lab, the country’s largest modular housing producer, to gradually apply humanoid robots at production and installation sites.

Space Manufacturing Lab is a wooden modular housing company that has led standardisation through a method in which much of a house is prefabricated in a factory. Recently it also unveiled the 'Samsung AI Modular Home' combining AI and IoT technology with Samsung Electronics. Under the agreement, humanoids will be additionally deployed to existing automated lines.

The process the two companies selected for the first rollout is insulation installation. Fiberglass, used as insulation, is harmful to workers’ respiratory systems and skin. The task is considered difficult to automate with existing industrial robots because the material is flexible and irregular in shape.

Bigwave Robotics plans to start with insulation work and continue identifying processes at Space Manufacturing Lab sites that humanoids can replace. It also plans to expand the scope of humanoid automation across the construction industry, including modular housing.

Park Jeong-jin (박정진), Space Manufacturing Lab’s chief executive, said that with the shortage of housing supply worsening by the day, improving the production efficiency of modular housing would be a key to rapid housing distribution. He said he expects the humanoid deployment to take the company’s systematic robot-based production process to the next stage.

Kim Min-gyo (김민교), Bigwave Robotics’ chief executive, said the collaboration had significant industrial meaning in that it greatly expanded humanoids’ territory from traditional manufacturing and logistics into construction and modular housing. He said the company will advance construction-focused physical AI solutions based on high-quality data secured at worksites and actively target not only the domestic market but also global modular housing markets including North America.