84% of large manufacturers adopt or plan physical AI

A survey by the Korea Enterprises Federation has quantified the current adoption and future plans for physical AI among manufacturers. In a survey of 100 manufacturing companies with 500 or more employees, 84.0% said they had already adopted physical AI, such as robots and autonomous vehicles, or planned to do so. Automation that began on assembly and production lines and in logistics operations is now moving toward humanoids capable of performing multiple tasks like people.

Some 47.0% of companies had already adopted physical AI, while 37.0% planned to do so in the future. Assembly and production processes were the most common application area at 66.0%, followed by logistics and transportation and warehouse management at 57.4%. This indicates that physical AI is expanding beyond equipment for specific processes to become part of the work performed across production sites.

Humanoids have emerged as the next candidate technology. Among companies that have not yet adopted physical AI, 64.9% said they planned to use humanoids. Among companies that had already adopted the technology, 63.8% reported using automated guided vehicles (AGV) and autonomous mobile robots (AMR). The Korea Enterprises Federation interpreted the findings as showing that manufacturers' interest is shifting from logistics automation to general-purpose task automation.

The changes companies expect also differed by their size. Among companies with 1,000 or more employees, 49.3% expected productivity and performance improvements. Among companies with 500 to fewer than 1,000 employees, 66.7% expected physical AI to ease difficulties in managing their workforce, including challenges in recruiting. Meanwhile, 61.9% believed that the adoption of physical AI would reduce the number of jobs, while just 3.6% expected total employment to increase.

However, with risks related to technological instability and system concerns at 34.5%, and uncertainty over profitability relative to investment costs at 31.0%, expanding physical AI operations cannot be decided on the basis of expectations alone. Lee Seung-yong, head of the Korea Enterprises Federation's Economic Analysis Team, said that related regulations should be reviewed and corporate support measures put in place to maximize the positive effects of physical AI.