Kondo Kagaku

Kondo Kagaku is a small family firm in Arakawa, Tokyo, founded on 1 September 1964 by Kinjiro Kondo. Its main business has always been radio control gear for model cars under the KO Propo brand, where it claims 32 IFMAR world titles and introduced the pistol-grip transmitter with the Expert EX-1 in 1982. Wikipedia lists 24 employees. It is privately held and publishes no revenue figures.

Its place in humanoid history rests on the KHR-1, released in June 2004 at 128,000 yen (about 1,600 US dollars in the United States), a 34 cm biped with 17 servos that a hobbyist could assemble and program. It was one of the cheapest programmable walking robots of its day and quickly became the standard platform for the lightweight class of the ROBO-ONE fighting competition in Japan; a KHR-1 won the Robo-One Jr category at RoboGames in 2004. The KHR-2HV and the current KHR-3HV followed, the latter now sold as version 3.1 with 22 servos.

The company still sells the KHR-3HV, KXR modular kits, multi-legged kits, the RCB-4HV controller and its own KRS, B3M and PMX servo lines, and released the KRS-9300 servo series and a KRC-6FS wireless controller recently. Unit sales have never been disclosed. It is a supplier to the hobby and education market, not a builder of full-size humanoids.