Sangju Selected for South Korea's 2026 Drone-Robot Hybrid Delivery
Sangju, a city in North Gyeongsang Province, South Korea, has been selected by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport to participate in the 2026 Drone Demonstration City Build Project. This marks Sangju’s second consecutive year as a project performer.
The program is a national competition designed to test drone delivery and related public services tailored to local characteristics, with the goal of helping local governments build practical drone services. Sangju has secured 100 million won in national funding to advance drone delivery around Gyecheon Island, accelerating the development and commercialization of the technology.
A consortium led by Sangju is organized with ㈜둠둠, Korea Airports Corporation, and the Gyeongbuk IT Convergence Industry Technology Institute. Dumdum handles customized drone and robot design and operation; Korea Airports Corporation is responsible for an integrated control system; and the Gyeongbuk IT Convergence Institute provides technical support and validates demonstration data.
This year the project shifts from last year’s single, unified drone-robot model to a more advanced “drone-robot dual-track hybrid” approach. In this arrangement, drones handle the middle-mile portion of delivery while ground robots perform the last-mile within the target area. The key technology, the Automatic Box Handover System, enables a drone-delivered box on Gyecheon Island to be automatically handed over to the ground robot for final delivery to customers.
Officials say the new model could boost one-time delivery capacity from four beverage boxes to as many as 16, and the city plans to link the service to a public delivery platform to reduce entry barriers for users.
A Sangju representative stated that the two-year selection underscores Sangju’s emergence as a future mobility hub and that the city aims to move beyond testing toward a standard, scalable model for K-drone delivery.
Beyond Korea, the project matters for U.S. readers because it highlights how a national government is funding and coordinating cross-sector collaboration—local government, industry, and research institutes—to advance urban drone and robotics logistics. The hybrid drone-robot approach addresses last-mile efficiency and could inform future supply-chain resilience, regulatory discussions, and potential cross-border partnerships in automated delivery, technology standards, and platform integration. As U.S. cities explore similar innovations, developments like Sangju’s demonstrate practical pathways from pilot to commercialization in drone-enabled urban logistics.