FRT Robotics: "From Exoskeletons to a Physical AI Data Platform Company"

[SBA X Dong-A.com Joint Feature] The Seoul Metropolitan Government and the Seoul Business Agency (SBA) successfully held the Seoul AI Robot Show, showcasing advanced technologies in AI, robotics, humanoids, autonomous driving, and smart manufacturing. The participatory robot exhibition, held together with the public, also featured a robotics expert forum, a robot competition, and presentations of results from robotics companies and research institutions. Dong-A.com, joining the Seoul AI Robot Show alongside the Seoul Metropolitan Government and SBA, introduces promising robotics companies drawing attention in Seoul, a city on friendly terms with robots.

An exoskeleton is a wearable robot worn on the body that augments human muscle strength. Its external-frame structure, equipped with motors or hydraulic actuators, senses the user's movement and adds force. Exoskeletons were originally developed to prevent musculoskeletal disorders at logistics sites and manufacturing plants where workers handle heavy loads. More recently, their application has expanded into rehabilitation, where they are used in gait training for stroke patients and people with spinal cord injuries.

Industrial sites are turning to robotics technologies such as humanoids and exoskeletons as a way to address labor shortages. The working-age population has declined amid a demographic cliff and population aging. According to data released by the Ministry of Employment and Labor in 2024, Korea's working-age population is projected to shrink rapidly from 2028 due to aging and population decline. Analysis indicates that 894,000 additional workers will be needed by 2032 to achieve the long-term economic growth outlook of 1.9%–2.1%. With new hiring difficult to secure, however, there is little choice but to consider ways of augmenting the existing workforce to raise operational efficiency.

The exoskeleton market sits at the intersection of major currents: technological innovation, response to aging, and strengthened worker safety. Market research firm Markets and Markets projects that the global exoskeleton market will grow from USD 560 million in 2025 to USD 2.03 billion by 2030. Exoskeleton technology, once confined to military or medical rehabilitation purposes, is now ready to step onto real industrial sites.

Amid an industrial environment facing rapid change, one startup has opened up the industrial exoskeleton (wearable robot) market on the strength of its technology. FRT Robotics envisions a future in which robots coexist with people rather than replace them. What led FRT Robotics to focus on technology for people? We met with CEO Jang Jae-ho to hear more.

From the Lab to the Field

"In graduate school, I mainly researched exoskeletons for rehabilitation — technology that helps frail or disabled people walk or eat. In the U.S., meanwhile, they were developing more powerful, faster exoskeletons using hydraulic technology. After joining KITECH, I combined hydraulic control technology with my own exoskeleton design expertise to build a hydraulically driven exoskeleton."

CEO Jang's interest in wearable robots began in graduate school, when he encountered exoskeleton technology from UC Berkeley in the United States. He went on to spend nearly a decade as a researcher at the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology (KITECH), devoting himself to developing exoskeletons for defense and industrial work.

Exoskeleton R&D was under way in Korea as well, led mainly by large corporations, but companies were reluctant to commercialize given the uncertain market outlook. "It was a shame to see so much technology funded by taxpayer money fail to make it past the laboratory door and end up shelved," CEO Jang recalled. "I decided to attempt commercialization myself and create the exoskeleton market that work sites were asking for."

CEO Jang believed that in product development, practicality should take priority over performance. Exoskeletons being developed overseas concentrated on realizing functionality through top-tier control systems, cutting-edge sensors, and high-performance actuators (energy conversion devices). But a product built for real work sites had to be affordable, lightweight, and simple.

FRT Robotics' flagship StepUp series is the outcome of CEO Jang's field-centered philosophy. StepUp NEO, released recently, takes the passive approach as far as it can go — assisting muscle strength through mechanical structure alone, with no battery or motor.

StepUp NEO is a wearable robot that supports muscle strength at the lower back and shoulders, and is used across a wide range of industrial settings including construction, logistics, manufacturing, care, agriculture, maintenance, and disaster response. The aim is not to enable users to lift heavier objects, but to minimize injury and fatigue while performing the same work. "Early on, we focused on maximizing force using hydraulic technology," CEO Jang said. "But at real industrial sites, what matters is getting hurt less and tiring less — not lifting more."

Differentiated by Worker-Centered Design Built on Intuitiveness and Reliability

FRT Robotics' technical differentiation rests on three points. The first is design optimized for work activity. Through field research and analysis, FRT Robotics identified the lower back and shoulders as the areas where workers most often report problems. It accordingly designed its products to assist the specific movements that lead to lower-back and shoulder disorders. "Workers injure their lower back and shoulders often. Repeatedly bending and straightening the back, for instance, eventually develops into a herniated disc," CEO Jang said. "FRT Robotics' exoskeletons are focused on preventing chronic disorders in workers."

The second is intuitive, predictable control technology. In the early days, the company applied automation algorithms in the name of increasing autonomy. But the automated functions were identified as a source of user anxiety instead. "When the user moves, a consistent level of force has to come out. If it isn't consistent, people feel uneasy," CEO Jang explained. "So now we build it as something experienced intuitively. Users have to be able to trust that when they make a given movement, the equipment responds exactly as expected."

Predictability connects directly to safety. In robotics there is a concept known as fail-safe: even when an error occurs, the system does no harm to the environment or to people. From the design stage, FRT Robotics built its products so that when a worker applies force, the exoskeleton's motion is constrained and other actions become possible. In a hazardous situation, the design supports users in removing themselves from danger under their own power with minimal force. Rather than sophisticated autonomous control, the company concentrated on the reliability of responding immediately and intuitively to the operator's intent.

The third is price competitiveness. Considering that workers are the ones using the product, FRT Robotics has put substantial effort into securing price competitiveness. Long-running research backed by government support gives the company a cost advantage, and using proven technology means no additional development costs are incurred.

Envisioning a Future Where People and Robots Work Together

Even for an innovative product, the market threshold was high. "Korea has many early adopters who take up new technology quickly, but industrial sites, where safety is directly at stake, take a conservative approach," CEO Jang explained. He noted a clear tendency for companies — as opposed to individuals — to demand solid verification data and references rather than accept the risk of adopting unproven new technology.

To break through that barrier, FRT Robotics chose a B2G (business-to-government) strategy. It built trust by demonstrating exoskeletons in extreme environments, including Korea Forest Service wildfire suppression operations and National Fire Agency rescue activities. FRT Robotics' exoskeletons are now registered as Innovative Procurement Products with the Public Procurement Service and are in use at public work sites. Feedback gathered from actual field conditions became nourishment for advancing the product. In the private sector as well, the company has supplied products to more than 50 companies across construction, logistics, manufacturing, and other industries in the form of proof-of-concept (PoC) projects, demonstrating the potential for market expansion.

FRT Robotics is now using the field-validation data accumulated domestically as a springboard for overseas market entry. "We believe we are at the stage of expanding sales and generating revenue on the basis of the data built up in the domestic market," CEO Jang said. "We are preparing to establish a U.S. subsidiary for overseas market entry, and we have also received adoption proposals from Europe and the Middle East."

Behind FRT Robotics' leap onto the global stage on the strength of its technology was support from the Seoul Business Agency (SBA). SBA connected FRT Robotics to the innovative procurement system and provided corporate networking and business operation mentoring. Support for demonstration projects linked to Seoul Municipal Care Hospital and public institutions helped the company build references that would have been difficult to secure on its own. "My impression was that SBA doesn't offer fragmented support — it supports every element a company needs to grow, from technology to investment to marketing, in an integrated way," CEO Jang said. "I believe that support was nourishment for FRT Robotics' growth."

"Just as Tesla distributed electric vehicles and gathered autonomous driving data, FRT Robotics plans to secure Physical AI data from industrial sites through wearable robots. I believe this data, which captures the know-how of how people work, will become learning material for a future in which humanoid robots and humans coexist."

FRT Robotics is aiming for a next-generation Tesla moment with exoskeletons. If exoskeleton adoption is the equivalent of the spread of electric vehicles, then a world where humanoids and humans collaborate is a vision on the scale of a Mars settlement project.

To reach that goal, FRT Robotics has received a transfer of on-device AI technology from the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) that identifies and learns user intent. The company plans to participate in the government-driven K-Humanoid Robot Alliance to build behavioral data and accelerate the advancement of robot control technology. Its plan is to grow from an exoskeleton company protecting worker safety into a data platform company opening the era of Physical AI.