Sony
Sony developed the QRIO entertainment humanoid alongside AIBO in the early 2000s and cancelled both in 2006.
- Type
- big tech
- Headquarters
- Tokyo, Japan
- Founded
- 1946
- Founders
- Masaru Ibuka, Akio Morita
- Status
- active
- Employees (est.)
- n/d
- Disclosed funding
- n/d
- Valuation
- n/d
- Listed
- TYO: 6758, NYSE: SONY
- Website
- sony.com
What the record says.
Sony is the Tokyo electronics and entertainment group founded in 1946 by Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita and listed in Tokyo and New York. Its humanoid record is short and entirely historical: the Sony Dream Robot programme that followed the AIBO robot dog and never turned into a product.
The SDR prototypes led to the SDR-4X, which in September 2003 was renamed QRIO, a play on curiosity. It stood about 60 cm tall, weighed 7.3 kg, recognised faces and voices, remembered people, walked, kicked a ball, stood up after being pushed over and ran at 23 cm per second, which earned it a Guinness World Records entry in the 2005 edition as the first bipedal robot capable of running; battery life was about an hour. Sony used it as what its US president called a corporate ambassador, sending two units to Carnegie Mellon in January 2005 and four to dance in a Beck music video, but it was never sold and the number built was never published.
On 26 January 2006 Sony announced it would stop QRIO development, the same day it dropped AIBO, as part of a group restructuring. Sony has announced no humanoid since.
1 humanoid tracked.
Milestones.
Sony ends the QRIO and AIBO programs
Sony announces it will stop development of the QRIO humanoid and the AIBO robot dog as part of a restructuring. The decision removes one of the leading corporate humanoid programs of the era.
Sony names its humanoid QRIO
Sony renames the SDR-4X II entertainment humanoid QRIO and demonstrates running, the first bipedal humanoid claimed to leave the ground with both feet. QRIO was never sold.
Sony shows SDR-3X, its first small bipedal humanoid
Sony's Dream Robot SDR-3X is a 50 cm entertainment humanoid that walks, kicks a ball and dances. It leads to SDR-4X and the QRIO robot.
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.
Startups, automakers, universities: who builds humanoids
108 makers, nine kinds. Startups hold 37 of the 44 humanoids you can order. Automakers, universities, big tech, conglomerates and NASA hold 45 robots between them and sell none of them.
Sources
- 01Sony GroupSony
- 02QRIOWikipedia
- 03Sony's Humanoid Robot "QRIO" Entertains Campus CommunityCarnegie Mellon University