Waseda University

Waseda University in Tokyo, founded in 1882, is where the modern humanoid started. In 1970 four laboratories in its School of Science and Engineering formed a bio-engineering group under Ichiro Kato, and between 1970 and 1973 they built WABOT-1, which the university describes as the first full-scale anthropomorphic robot in the world: it walked on legs, gripped and carried objects with tactile-sensing hands, measured distances with its cameras and held simple conversations in Japanese, with the estimated mental ability of a one-and-a-half-year-old child. WABOT-2, built from 1980 to 1984 and shown at the Tsukuba science expo in 1985, read sheet music and played an electronic organ while accompanying a singer.

Atsuo Takanishi succeeded Kato and directs the work today. The Humanoid Robotics Institute was set up in April 2000 and became a project research institute in 2020. Its robots include the WABIAN bipeds, the WT talking robots that copy the human vocal tract and the KOBIAN emotion-expressing humanoid.

Nothing is sold. Current work has drifted toward sports training, surgical and neonatal training simulators with Kyoto Kagaku and tmsuk, and farm robots. In July 2025 Waseda co-founded the Kyoto Humanoid Association with tmsuk, Murata, Renesas and Sumitomo Heavy Industries, which aims to mass-produce humanoids in Japan from 2027.