Stories of QRIO and PINO, and Beyond: Lessons Learned from Small Humanoid Projects From R&D to Business

Author

Fujita, Masahiro and Kawanami, Yasunori and Miyazawa, Kiyokazu and Kinoshita, Masaya and Sawai, Kunihito and Yamasaki, Fuminori and Matsui, Tatsuya and Endo, Ken and Ishiguro, Shu and Kitano, Hiroaki

Abstract

In 1997, Sony announced AIBO, a fully autonomous small quadruped robot for home entertainment, and in 1999 the company began selling it as a consumer product. Soon after development, two small humanoid robots were announced. One was QRIO by Sony, which is about 60[Formula: see text]cm height body with dynamical bipedal walking and whole-body cooperative control. The other was PINO by the ERATO Kitano Symbiotic Systems Project, which is about 70[Formula: see text]cm height body, Open HW/SW with inexpensive off-the-shelf component. In this paper, we revisit the two humanoids and nearly 20-year-old technologies, and discuss what were done 20 years ago, what have been achieved and what challenges are ahead.