GIST Establishes a 'Physical AI Research Center' Hub at MIT in the U.S.

Aiming to Develop 'Human-Centered Physical AI Interaction Technologies' That People Can Trust
Breakthroughs in Biometric Signal and Interaction Technologies for SDV, Autonomous Driving, and More

The Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have established a physical research hub in the United States for their joint research center, launching a global research collaboration system.

Participants of the ‘GIST-MIT PAIR-HCI Joint Workshop’ held on the 6th at COEX in Seoul are taking a commemorative photo. Photo by GIST

According to GIST on July 15, the 'GIST-MIT Human-Centered Physical AI Interaction Research Center (PAIR-HCI Center)', led by Professor Kim Seungjun from the Department of AI, has recently secured a joint research space within MIT and officially begun collaborative research.

The PAIR-HCI Center is operated with support from the 'Establishment of Collaborative Hubs with Excellent Overseas Research Institutes Program' by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the National Research Foundation of Korea. By combining the strong research capabilities of both GIST and MIT, the center aims to develop 'human-centered physical AI interaction technologies' that are trusted and organically utilized by people. The project will run until December 2030.

To further strengthen their cooperation framework, the two institutions held a dedication ceremony for the joint research base on May 20 at the Stata Center at MIT in Boston, United States, attended by Daniela Rus, Director of MIT CSAIL, and GIST researchers. This space will serve as a physical hub for regular research meetings, medium- and long-term research visits, joint experiment design, personnel exchange, and joint symposiums between the two universities.

In fact, GIST researchers visited MIT for one month from May 2 to June 2 to conduct joint research. During an academic symposium held at that time, they discussed key achievements and global technology trends in human-centered physical AI fields, including software-defined vehicles (SDV), autonomous driving, robotics, extended reality (XR), and inclusive interfaces, and coordinated future directions for collaboration.

This research collaboration also continued in Korea. The GIST research team held a joint workshop in Seoul with MIT researchers who visited Korea for the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2026), the world’s leading AI conference, held at COEX from June 6 to 10.

At the workshop, GIST presented technologies for user biometric signals and state recognition in SDV, autonomous driving, robotics, and XR environments. The MIT team shared simulation technologies for robot learning and the latest advances in generative AI, verifying the potential for technological convergence.

Going forward, the two universities plan to deepen and broaden their research through key initiatives, including the establishment of virtual simulation environments for robot learning and evaluation, technologies for understanding user modeling based on biometric signals, and the development of high-quality multimodal datasets. Furthermore, they will expand research into applied fields such as autonomous vehicles, collaborative robots, humanoids, and mobile XR devices by integrating MIT's strengths in robot AI simulation technology with GIST's capabilities in human-computer interaction (HCI) design.

Professor Kim Seungjun, who leads the research team, stated, "Establishing this research hub in the U.S. and holding a series of national and international workshops is significant as it means the PAIR-HCI Center has secured a practical and sustainable foundation for global research. Going forward, we will combine the world-class research capacities of GIST and MIT to develop highly reliable physical AI technologies that people can trust and use, contributing to the activation of the related industrial ecosystem."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.