From Unitree to Soulware

The Proof of a Partnership Is a Stage, Not a Contract

The humanoids that took the stage when Galaxy Robot Park was unveiled on May 15, 2026 were hardware from China's Unitree. The result of the partnership went public in front of an audience before it ever went out as a press release.

That day the robots wore outfits drawn from G-DRAGON's stage wardrobe and danced in formation to "HOME SWEET HOME" and TAEMIN's "Advice" and "Idea." International outlets ran the scene again and again, and not because of what the hardware could do. It was because humanoids whose stage had been the lab and the factory floor were handling K-POP choreography — because the purpose had changed.

Beyond the group numbers, the park is home to robot boxing that mirrors a visitor's movements in real time, a robot arm that draws portraits, robot dogs and a valet parking robot. The August 21 grand opening added 17 more types of robot, bringing piano performance and ice cream making onto the list. More models means hardware from more manufacturers continuing to move into the same operating environment.

Many Bodies, One Set of Controls

That operating environment is called Soulware. Developed in-house by Galaxy Corporation, this Physical AI operating system skips the motion capture studio: it uses real dance footage as training data and applies reinforcement learning to transplant choreography onto a robot. Today a single operator on one console drives twelve robots at once and holds their formation, and the company has set scaling that to a hundred as its target.

The point is the structure, not the performance figures. Soulware is not bound to one manufacturer. It was designed on the premise of controlling robots from many companies the same way, not only the Unitree hardware used at the park. CEO Choi Yong-ho defines the company's position like this.

If American and Chinese companies build the robot hardware, we build the OS — something like Google's Android.— Choi Yong-ho, CEO of Galaxy Corporation

It is the structure of the smartphone industry carried over intact. The company that makes the handset and the company that makes the operating system running on it are not rivals; they need each other. Galaxy says the operating system will ship as a commercial product next year.

Why Go with Chinese Manufacturers

China's humanoid makers chose vertical integration, developing most of the core components themselves. Building actuators, reducers and motors in-house brings down unit cost and development cycles together. For a use case that puts ten or more robots on a single stage, reworks their exteriors to match costumes, and swaps them out as the performance schedule demands, that difference is decisive.

A stage is a harder client than a factory. Unlike an industrial floor where a fixed path repeats, a venue requires a dozen machines to stay out of each other's space while locking onto the beat, and one unit's error collapses the whole formation. For the manufacturers, a park running several shows a day is a testbed where real-world usage data accumulates. Both sides need the same stage, for different reasons.

So rather than binding itself exclusively to a single manufacturer, Galaxy chose to work with hardware from several suppliers at once. Soulware's hardware neutrality is both the consequence of that choice and its precondition. If a model is discontinued or a better option comes along, the accumulated choreography, the motion data and the control layer all stay where they are.

The Park Is a Laboratory — From R&D to Business

Galaxy Robot Park is a data collection site as much as a visitor attraction. More than 20,000 people came through during the July and August pre-opening, and every show sold out. The stage repeating daily is itself an experiment validating multi-robot synchronization, balance control and rhythm tracking, while the boxing and mirroring attractions, where visitors operate the robots themselves, generate real-world interaction data. Data that is hard to obtain in a laboratory accumulates alongside ticket sales.

The business plan the company has published sits on that structure: more than 1,000 robot performances a year plus a global tour, a second site at the Burj Khalifa mall in Dubai, and additional US locations under review. Commercializing its own robot devices wrapped in character IP, along with the choreography-learning operating system, belongs to the same roadmap.

Three layers, then. The hardware comes from several manufacturers including Unitree; control and learning come from Soulware; character, content and IP come from Galaxy. The hypothesis that a company can stand at the center of the robot industry without building robots itself is one this company tests every day, on a stage in Seoul's Gangdong District.