Rainbow Robotics

Rainbow Robotics of Daejeon, founded in 2011, is one of those companies that remember what humanoid robotics looked like before it became fashionable. Its name is associated with the Hubo line. The DRC-HUBO robot won the DARPA Robotics Challenge in 2015, a contest in which machines had to operate in a simulated disaster environment. That success still drives the company's reputation in academia. Today Rainbow Robotics is a company listed on the KRX exchange under the symbol 277810, partly linked by equity to Samsung, a rarity among the companies described in our catalog. It develops in parallel the HUBO-2, a research platform for bipedal walking, and the newer RB-Y1, a two-armed wheeled robot for industrial tasks. We do not know its headcount or the amount of funding, so we relied on public listings. The history of Hubo shows that the road from laboratory to factory can take a decade. How such a robot works from the inside is explained in “How Does a Humanoid Robot Work”. The takeaway for the reader: an academic heritage is an asset, but not a guarantee of commercial success.

The portfolio has two different poles. Rainbow Robotics RB-Y1 was shown in March 2024: a wheeled manipulator with two arms, 140 cm tall, weighing 131 kg, with 24 degrees of freedom (DOF). A price of about USD 150,000 (roughly PLN 581,400 (≈ EUR 133,220 at NBP rate 4.3641 of 21 October 2026)) is cited in roundups, but the manufacturer has not officially confirmed it. The robot has worked in pilots: Coupang in logistics, and Samsung and Toyota in factories, that is, places where two hands and a stable base are needed. Rainbow Robotics HUBO-2 is a research platform: 125 cm, 45 kg, 38 degrees of freedom, about 2 hours of operation; there is no public price or full specification. The RB-Y1's wheeled design is a deliberate compromise: less spectacular than a walking humanoid, but more stable on a shop floor. Comparison with the Apptronik Apollo shows how different the paths to the same goal can be. An important caveat: the pilot figures describe trials, not serial production. The question of how many robots actually stand at customer sites therefore remains open.

Rainbow Robotics stands out with something most competitors lack: the status of a listed company (KRX:277810) and a link to Samsung, which suggests technological and financial backing. There are no specific funding rounds, valuation or revenue figures. Pilot customers are Coupang, Samsung and Toyota, names from logistics, electronics and automotive, but the scale of deployments is not publicly known. Competitors among industrial humanoids include Apptronik, Agility Robotics and Boston Dynamics with its electric Atlas. A separate case is Toyota Motor, which is also a pilot customer. Rainbow plays the role of a supplier of research and industrial hardware, not a mass-market manufacturer. Because revenue data is not public, we judge the company's level of maturity by how often it appears in descriptions of pilots. It is worth following the company's stock-exchange reports, as they are the only reliable source of figures.

Rainbow Robotics' presence in Poland has not been confirmed. Both models are marked as unavailable in the country, and we do not know of a distributor. The path for a Polish university or research institute is to contact the company directly about the HUBO-2 or RB-Y1. Buying a robot for about USD 150,000 is an expense at the edge of grant budgets, so it is worth checking the forms of support for robotization. The article “Poland's Robotization Tax Relief” explains one of them, Poland's robotization tax relief (ulga na robotyzację). It is worth sending the inquiry together with a description of the application: research manufacturers respond faster when they see a concrete project rather than general interest in a robot.

Rainbow Robotics offers a respectable pedigree, exchange-listed backing and several pilots at big names. What is missing is reliable data on price and scale. For a Polish researcher it is an interesting platform; for a factory, for now, a pilot from distant Korea. A Polish laboratory should ask about support terms, and a factory about the pilot results at Coupang, Samsung and Toyota, which will show whether the robot really works. Apply the same questioning tone to every humanoid, including those on the list in “Chinese Humanoid Robots”.