Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Sunday, July 6th. Today on Forbes, how South Korea's

J-Bels are pushing the robotics revolution. In 2021, Hyundai Motor Company paid $1.1 billion to acquire

80% of robotics pioneer Boston Dynamics, famous for its videos of its dog-shaped

bot named Spot, and its running and jumping humanoid Atlas. The deal initially seemed

more of a headline grab for Hyundai rather than part of a fully baked strategy. That's no longer

the case. Four years later, Hyundai, which had $130 billion in 2024 sales and is number 142 on the

2025 Forbes Global 2000, a ranking of the largest public companies in the world, now represents

the tip of the spear in Korea Inc's thrust into robotics. Hyundai, the world's third largest automaker,

when including its 35% ownership of Kia Corp, has kept developing spot especially for use as a

roving site inspector, and continues to iterate Atlas, with the intention of selling mass-produced

humanoids controlled by AI as soon as 2028.

Hyundai's Robotics Lab has already deployed its ExpoL platform of wearable robotic exoskeletons

for use in factories. Expo's shoulder, launched late last year after trials with 300 workers,

is said to reduce shoulder and deltoid muscle exertions

by more than 30% when lifting heavy objects like car parts.

Its ExpoMex is a more complicated rehabilitation suit that can help people walk again.

Incredibly, these Expoil exoskeletons don't require an outside power source, instead using passive spring-tork

mechanics.

Industrial robots are nothing new to Korea, which already leads the world in density of

robot deployment, with 1,000 bots per 10,000 factory workers, compared to about 300 in the

U.S. and 470 in China. The robotics division of

Dusan, which has $13 billion in sales and is controlled by billionaire Park Jong-wan,

...