# Japan built the first humanoids, then stopped shipping them

> Japan has 24 humanoids and 12 makers in our record, more than any country except China and the United States. Two of the 24 can be ordered today, and both were first shown in 2009.

Published: 2026-09-06
Section: History
Author: Geert Jan van Vlastuin, Editor, humanoid.observer
Canonical: https://humanoid.observer/blog/japan-built-the-first-humanoids-and-then-stopped/
Licence: editorial text all rights reserved. The underlying data is CC BY 4.0 at https://humanoid.observer/data/.
Cite as: humanoid.observer, https://humanoid.observer/blog/japan-built-the-first-humanoids-and-then-stopped/, accessed <date>.

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Japan has 24 humanoid robots in our record, built by 12 makers. Only China, with 65, and the United States, with 44, have more. Two of Japan's 24 can be ordered today, and both were first shown in 2009. Since 2020 Japanese makers have revealed two machines. Chinese makers have revealed 59, and 27 of those have an order button. The country that built the first full-scale humanoid in 1973 has, on the evidence in our files, left the market it opened.

## Fifty years of Japanese humanoids in one table

We took the 24 Japanese records, sorted them by first reveal, and counted status and availability on 4 September 2026.

| Era | Machines | Status today | Orderable now | Names |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1973 to 1999 | 5 | 5 retired | 0 | WABOT-1, WABOT-2, Honda E series, P2, P3 |
| 2000 to 2009 | 10 | 6 retired, 2 discontinued, 2 commercial | 2 | ASIMO, QRIO, HRP-2, EMIEW, Kiyomori, WABIAN-2R, HRP-3, NEXTAGE, KHR-3HV, HRP-4C |
| 2010 to 2019 | 7 | 3 retired, 1 discontinued, 2 research, 1 prototype | 0 | HRP-4, S-One, Pepper, Kaleido, T-HR3, CUE, HRP-5P |
| 2020 to 2026 | 2 | 1 research, 1 prototype | 0 | Kawasaki Friends, Punyo |

Fourteen of the 24 are retired and 3 are discontinued: 17 machines that no longer exist as programmes. Twelve of the 24 carry the category "historic". Fifteen of the 24 were first shown by 2009. The busiest decade was the 2000s, with 10 reveals. The 2020s so far have 2.

## The line from WABOT-1 to ASIMO

[WABOT-1](/robots/wabot-1/) was completed in 1973 by Ichiro Kato's group at [Waseda University](/companies/waseda/). It walked at about 45 seconds a step, grasped objects and held a conversation in Japanese; our record calls it the first full-scale anthropomorphic robot. [WABOT-2](/robots/wabot-2/) followed in 1984, read sheet music with a camera and played an electronic organ with hands and feet at the Tsukuba Expo in 1985. Neither used teleoperation. Both were built once.

[Honda](/companies/honda/) picked up the thread in secret. The [E series](/robots/honda-e-series/), seven pairs of legs built between 1986 and 1993, went from one step every five seconds to stairs and slopes. On 20 December 1996 Honda showed [P2](/robots/honda-p2/), 182 cm and 210 kg, the first biped with all batteries, computers and motors on board. [P3](/robots/honda-p3/) came in September 1997 at 160 cm and 130 kg. [ASIMO](/robots/asimo/) was unveiled on 31 October 2000. The 2005 version ran at 6 km/h and worked as a receptionist at Honda's Tokyo headquarters. The 2011 version ran at 9 km/h, poured drinks and picked its own path through a crowd. Our record marks its teleoperation as partial, and the price as never: ASIMO was not sold, and rentals to companies were reported at about $150,000 a year in the 2000s.

On 28 June 2018 Nikkei reported that Honda had disbanded the ASIMO development team to focus on practical robotics such as mobility aids. The daily shows at Miraikan in Tokyo ended on 31 March 2022. The name survives as ASIMO OS, Honda's vehicle software. Thirty-two years of work, from E0 in 1986 to the 2018 decision, produced no humanoid a customer could buy.

## The national programme and the entertainment robots

In 1998 the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry funded the five-year Humanoid Robotics Project, run by [AIST](/companies/aist/) with Kawada Industries and Honda. HRP-1 was a modified P3. [HRP-2](/robots/hrp-2/), completed in 2003, became the workhorse: about 16 units went to Japanese and French labs at several hundred thousand dollars each, and it appears in hundreds of papers. [HRP-3](/robots/hrp-3/) added dust and splash resistance in 2007. [HRP-4C](/robots/hrp-4c/) walked a Tokyo catwalk in 2009 and cost AIST about JPY 20 million to build. [HRP-4](/robots/hrp-4/), a 39 kg research platform from 2010, was sold by [Kawada](/companies/kawada/) to universities at around JPY 26 million. [HRP-5P](/robots/hrp-5p/), shown in September 2018, picked up a gypsum board and screwed it to a wall by itself, no teleoperation, in an AIST video. It is logged as research, not for sale. The HRP line sold to labs and never to anyone else.

The corporate entertainment robots ended faster. [Sony](/companies/sony/) showed SDR-3X in November 2000, named it [QRIO](/robots/sony-qrio/) in September 2003 and claimed the first bipedal run in 2003. QRIO was never sold. On 26 January 2006 Sony ended the QRIO and AIBO programmes in a restructuring. [Hitachi](/companies/hitachi/)'s wheeled [EMIEW](/robots/hitachi-emiew/) ran from 2005 to 2017 and guided passengers at Haneda Airport in 2016 and 2017; it is discontinued. [Tmsuk](/companies/tmsuk/)'s [Kiyomori](/robots/tmsuk-kiyomori/), a samurai-armoured biped built with Waseda in 2005, was teleoperated and built once. Waseda's own [WABIAN-2R](/robots/wabian-2r/) of 2006 was a gait study.

## What Japan actually sold

Japan's commercial humanoid record is short enough to list in full. [Kondo Kagaku](/companies/kondo/) has sold the KHR hobby kits since 2004; the [KHR-3HV](/robots/kondo-khr-3hv/) of 2009, 40 cm and 1.5 kg, is still in stock at $1,500 and runs pre-programmed motions, with teleoperation logged as yes. [Kawada](/companies/kawada/)'s [NEXTAGE](/robots/kawada-nextage/), also from 2009, is a dual-arm upper body without legs that has done assembly and kitting work at Glory Ltd since 2010; it is sold on quotation, with early reports around JPY 7.4 million, and was updated as NEXTAGE Fillie in 2022. Those two are the whole orderable list. NEXTAGE is not even in our buy table, because there is no public price to put there.

The third and largest seller is the one that stopped. [Pepper](/robots/softbank-pepper/), presented by Masayoshi Son on 5 June 2014 at 198,000 yen, went on sale to consumers in Japan on 20 June 2015 and sold its first 1,000 units in about a minute. About 27,000 were built before [SoftBank Robotics](/companies/softbank-robotics/) paused production in 2020. Pepper was designed by Aldebaran in France; SoftBank sold Aldebaran to United Robotics Group in 2022. Add HRP-2 and HRP-4 going to labs and ASIMO on rental, and that is every Japanese humanoid that ever changed hands for money in our record.

## 2013 to 2023: programmes that did not become products

[SCHAFT](/companies/schaft/), a University of Tokyo spin-out, won the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials on 20 December 2013 with the [S-One](/robots/schaft-s-one/), scoring 27 of 32 points ahead of every American team, and was bought by Google the same month. Alphabet shut it in November 2018 after a sale to SoftBank fell through. [Toyota](/companies/toyota/)'s [T-HR3](/robots/toyota-t-hr3/), shown on 21 November 2017, is a teleoperated avatar: an operator's movements are mirrored, only the balance is autonomous, and it was demonstrated over 5G and at the Tokyo Olympics. Toyota's [CUE](/robots/toyota-cue/) shot basketballs from 2018 to 2024 and set records before winding down. [Punyo](/robots/toyota-punyo/), from December 2023, is a soft upper body at Toyota Research Institute in the United States. [Kawasaki](/companies/kawasaki/)'s [Kaleido](/robots/kawasaki-kaleido/) has been shown at the iREX trade fair since 2017 and reached its eighth version in 2023; the smaller [Friends](/robots/kawasaki-friends/) arrived in 2022. Both are prototypes, not for sale, teleoperation partial.

So the two Japanese reveals of the 2020s are a Kawasaki prototype and a research torso in a US lab. Neither has a price, a delivery date or a customer.

## Japan against China and the United States since 2020

| | Japan | China | United States |
|---|---|---|---|
| Robots in record | 24 | 65 | 44 |
| Makers in record | 12 | 30 | 33 |
| Robots first revealed 2020 or later | 2 | 59 | 32 |
| Makers with a reveal since 2020 | 2 | 27 | 22 |
| Of those robots, orderable now | 0 | 27 | 5 |
| Of those robots, with a public price | 0 | 23 | 6 |
| Makers with any orderable robot | 2 | 17 | 4 |
| Most recent first reveal | December 2023 | 20 October 2025 | 9 July 2026 |
| Funding entries in record | 1 | 19 | 28 |
| Deployments in record | 4, all ended | 22 | 18 |

Chinese makers have revealed 57 humanoids since the start of 2023, from 26 companies; 24 are in stock and 3 on preorder. The [Unitree G1](/robots/unitree-g1/), shown on 13 May 2024 and in stock at $13,500, is younger than everything Japan has sold. The United States is not a shipping story either, as [China builds, America demos](/blog/china-builds-america-demos/) sets out, but it has 32 reveals this decade and 28 funding entries. Japan's one funding entry is not a humanoid round at all: SoftBank's $5,375,000,000 purchase of ABB's robotics division on 8 October 2025, industrial arms. Of the 52 deployments in our record, 4 involve a Japanese humanoid, 3 of them Pepper and 1 ASIMO at Honda's own headquarters and Miraikan. All 4 have ended.

## What the record cannot explain

The data says when programmes stopped, and in three cases it carries the stated reason: Sony's 2006 restructuring, Honda's 2018 turn to mobility aids, and Alphabet closing SCHAFT when the SoftBank sale collapsed. Pepper's pause in 2020 has no reason logged. There is no field for why, and we will not invent one. The files cannot say whether Honda or Toyota run humanoid work they have not shown, whether Japanese factories are buying Chinese machines instead, or whether Kawasaki's stated aims for Kaleido, disaster response and nursing, will produce an order form. What the files do show is that 11 of the 12 Japanese makers are still active companies, and that only 5 of them, AIST, Kawada, Kawasaki, Kondo and Toyota, have a humanoid whose status is not retired or discontinued.

If you want a humanoid from Japan today, the options are a $1,500 hobby kit that is 40 cm tall and a legless factory arm sold on quotation. There is no full-size Japanese biped you can order, and no Japanese machine with a public price above $1,500. Anyone treating Japan's 24 records as a supplier list, or its heritage as a pipeline, should read the status column instead: 17 of 24 are over. The one programme still iterating in Japan with a stated job is Kaleido, and it is on its eighth prototype with no price. Buy from where the order buttons are, and count Japan's humanoids as history until a Japanese maker publishes a price and a delivery date.

## Sources

- [WABOT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WABOT), Wikipedia
- [Robot Development History](https://global.honda/innovation/robotics/robot-development-history.html), Honda
- [ASIMO](https://global.honda/innovation/robotics/ASIMO.html), Honda
- [HRP-2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HRP-2), Wikipedia
- [AIST HRP-5P press release](https://www.aist.go.jp/aist_e/list/latest_research/2018/20181116/en20181116.html), AIST
- [Pepper (robot)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper_(robot)), Wikipedia
- [T-HR3](https://global.toyota/en/detail/19666346), Toyota
- [KHR-3HV](https://kondo-robot.com/product/03068), Kondo Kagaku