Kawada HRP-2 Promet

HRP-2 Promet is the machine that finished Japan's Humanoid Robotics Project, the national programme run by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to find out what a human-shaped robot could actually do in a human world. Kawada Industries built the hardware and announced the robot in 2002; AIST supplied the control research. It stands 154 cm tall, weighs 58 kg and moves on 30 degrees of freedom. Two design decisions still stand out. The hip joint is cantilevered, carried on one side rather than bridged across the pelvis, which narrows the hips enough for the robot to walk sideways through gaps a conventional biped could not enter. And the electronics are packed densely enough inside the torso that HRP-2 needs no backpack — the bulging rucksack of batteries and controllers that most walking humanoids of its generation wore between the shoulders. The result is a silhouette closer to a person than to a machine carrying its own computer. The robot was sold as a research platform rather than a product for industry, and it earned its keep that way: for well over a decade it was one of the reference bipeds in academic work on walking, whole-body motion and human-robot cooperation. In 2017 Japan's National Museum of Nature and Science added HRP-2 Promet to its register of Essential Historical Materials for Science and Technology, the list of objects the country considers worth preserving as engineering heritage. Kawada Robotics still lists it in the research section of its catalogue, but publishes neither a price nor a delivery time.

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