Wakamaru

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries

Japan

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Wakamaru is Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' attempt at the world's first communication robot, and it is more interesting as a piece of history than as a product. MHI built the first prototype in 2003 and put a commercial model on the Japanese market in 2005 for around fifteen thousand dollars, after testing it in real Tokyo homes and claiming it was reliable and safe in family environments. What it offered was conversation rather than work: a vocabulary of about ten thousand words, recognition of ten faces, four languages, a soft female voice and eye contact while speaking, plus the manners of a household member, greeting you at the door, reporting your calls and emails, waking you with the headlines and weather, reminding you of appointments and shaking hands. It could also call the Japanese equivalent of the emergency services if it suspected something was wrong, and its owner could watch the home through the forehead camera over a mobile phone link. The hardware was modest and deliberate: about one metre tall and thirty kilograms, child-sized on purpose, with thirteen degrees of freedom split three in the head, four in each arm and two in a wheeled base that moved at a walking-pace one kilometre per hour, two cameras and an array of one ultrasound and three infrared sensors plus a bumper and a microphone, and a lithium-ion battery good for about two hours with self-charging. It ran autonomously or under teleoperation. The commercial result was disappointing: sales fell well short of expectations, and by 2007 Wakamaru was mostly working as a corporate receptionist before production ended later in the decade. Even so, it is remembered as a milestone in human-robot interaction and one of the first serious attempts to put an advanced humanoid to work among people.