What just happened? Humanoid robots have long been making their way into different areas of the US workplace. It's also happening in South Korea, which has approved an exception to industrial safety rules so 20 machines can be tested alongside workers. For employees already worried about being replaced, removing these barriers – both literally and figuratively – isn't going to offer much reassurance.

South Korea's industry ministry announced the approval on October 13 through its regulatory sandbox program, which allows companies to test new technologies under exemptions from existing requirements.

The problem is that the country's industrial robot safety rules were written around machines that don't move around freely like a human would. They require fences and other barriers separating robot work areas from people, which would make it pretty difficult for humanoids to walk around factories and share tasks with employees.

As the Seoul Economic Daily reports, robotics and AI company Robros received permission to test its bipedal machines across semiconductor, automotive, shipbuilding, and logistics sites. The exemption lets the robots operate in spaces shared with human workers or adjacent to their work areas.

This doesn't give manufacturers permission to remove every single safety fence and let robots roam around without a care. The Kyunghyang Shinmun reports that the trials will operate under additional safety standards. The approval covers a specific trial, while the government plans to use the resulting data to revise industrial robot safety requirements more broadly.

The 20 robots will be split across Nepes (semiconductors), Sungwoo Hitech (automotive), HD Hyundai Samho (shipbuilding), and Delivery Lab (logistics).

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