韩国企业推进军用四足机器人研发，但尚无新增订单或采购落地

Companies developing quadruped robots have recently focused on advancing robot performance for military purposes. The goal is to increase the robots' usefulness alongside existing weapons systems on the battlefield and to enable robots to serve in place of soldiers in practice.
Lion Robotics demonstrated its quadruped robot training alongside tanks and helicopters at an Army joint exercise in June this year. This proved that quadruped robots can perform roles such as reconnaissance, detection, and surveillance in various environments together with existing military weapons systems. The company is also working to improve the quadruped robot's functions specifically for the military, targeting early next year. The goal is to enable the quadruped robot to operate normally even in extreme environments such as underwater or below-freezing conditions.
This movement is not limited to Lion Robotics. Rainbow Robotics (277810), an affiliate of Samsung Electronics, also deployed tanks and multi-legged reconnaissance robots in a joint firepower exercise involving the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps in May this year. Rainbow Robotics has been supplying quadruped robots for counterterrorism operations to the Army since 2024, together with Hyundai Rotem.
LIG Nex1 D&A, a leading domestic defense company, is developing a new quadruped robot together with Ghost Robotics, a U.S. robot development firm whose acquisition it recently completed. The goal is to reduce product weight by 40% compared with the existing quadruped robot "Vision 60," while increasing maximum payload capacity by 30% and battery operating time by 60%. The aim is to raise mission effectiveness in the field. The company also plans to mount a robot arm (manipulator arm) on the existing robot. When a quadruped robot is equipped with an arm, its operational missions can expand to include opening doors, handling hazardous materials, and retrieving targets.
Companies are accelerating robot development for military purposes because demand to replace soldiers with robots is high in the defense market. In particular, quadruped robots are regarded as multi-platforms because, unlike drones, they can move across most of the terrain that humans traverse and can perform dangerous missions such as searching for snipers and checking for explosives. According to market research firm Future Market Insights, the military security quadruped robot market is projected to grow from $260 million this year to $3.584 billion in 2036.
The fact that the South Korean military is considering robots as a countermeasure against shrinking troop resources also influences this trend. According to the Ministry of National Defense, the military's troop strength fell from 560,000 in 2019 to 450,000 as of July last year. At this pace, the total military troop strength is projected to reach only around 350,000 by 2040.
However, for quadruped robots developed by domestic companies to spread in the domestic and overseas defense markets, the high price issue must be resolved. While Rainbow Robotics' quadruped robot is reported to cost more than 100 million won per unit, quadruped robots from Chinese companies cost only in the range of 10 million to 30 million won. Although security takes priority over price in the defense market, the high price bracket inevitably acts as a burden. Hong Seung-woo, a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Korea University, said, "China's robot manufacturing process costs are about two to five times cheaper than Korea's," adding, "Korean robot prices need to come down to a level slightly higher than China's to be competitive."
Some argue that a defense artificial intelligence (AI) full-stack strategy must support the deployment of robots. Yoon Dae-yeop, a professor in the Department of Military Studies at Daejeon University, pointed out, "With current unmanned systems, a contradiction arises where the more drones and robots are deployed, the more people are needed to operate them," and added, "True automation and intelligence in the military can only be achieved through approaches such as building defense data, developing AI models for defense, and constructing real-time cloud systems."