WABOT-2
WABOT-2 was Waseda's specialist musician robot, able to read a score and play a keyboard, presented at the 1985 Tsukuba science expo.
We have not sat down with this one. The score below is computed from the data we hold, and the facts on this page are sourced. It is not on sale, so there is nothing to recommend.
How the score is built
Capability is what the machine physically does. Value compares it with others at a similar price, not with the whole market. Buyability asks whether you can really order one. Ecosystem is the software and community around it. Proof is what it has done in the field, which is where most humanoids score badly and should.
- Status
- Retired
- Category
- historic
- First revealed
- 1984
- Form
- upper-body
- Height
- n/a
- Weight
- n/a
- Payload
- n/a
- Degrees of freedom
- 50
- Battery
- n/a
- Runtime
- n/a
- Walking speed
- n/a
- Actuation
- electric
- Units deployed (est.)
- not disclosed
- Teleoperation
- no
Where it stands
Keyboard-playing humanoid completed 1984; performed at Expo 85 in Tsukuba.
What stands out
- Played the organ at Expo 85
Autonomy, observed
Read musical scores with its camera and played an electronic organ with hands and feet; performed at Expo 85.
Hands, sensors, brain
- Hands: ten fingers
- Sensors: camera for reading sheet music
- AI stack: sheet-music reading and performance system
Price and volume
Research robot.
Milestones.
Waseda WABOT-2 plays the organ
WABOT-2 reads sheet music with a camera and plays an electronic organ with fingers and feet, and can accompany a singer. It is presented at the Tsukuba Expo in 1985.
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.
A short history of the humanoid, from Elektro to the order button
Our record holds 111 dated milestones since 1939. Sixty-eight of them are from this decade, and what changed was not the walking. It was the price tag.
Why hands are the hardest part of a humanoid
Of 182 humanoids on record, 96 describe their hands and 13 publish a degrees-of-freedom figure for them. The word dexterous appears 21 times and comes with a number once.
Other robots by Waseda University.
WABIAN-2R
WABIAN (WAseda BIpedal humANoid) is Waseda's series of walking research humanoids started in 1996. WABIAN-2R, 150 cm and 64 kg with 41 DOF, was used to study human-like gait.
WABOT-1
WABOT-1, built by Ichiro Kato's group at Waseda University between 1970 and 1973, is generally considered the world's first full-scale humanoid robot, combining walking, manipulation, vision and speech.
Sources
- 01WABOT, WikipediaWikipedia
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