- For research and development of human-collaboration robotics operated within actual human living and work environments.
- For robotics-related research and development for movement, interaction, communication, image recognition, voice recognition, and voice synthesis.
HIRO was developed by Kawada Industries, Inc. with its background and know-how gained from lease and maintenance business with biped humanoid robot, HRP-2 “Promet.” By keeping the price low, Kawada released HIRO as an upper body humanoid robot platform that enables users to carry out practical robotics research activities.
HIRO enables its users to develop important technologies for next generation robotics including safety devices, image processing, voice recognition/synthesis, and work in real human environments. By incorporating an environment recognition device, for instance, an exterior camera, HIRO becomes a suitable research tool to developing future generation robotics systems.
Kawada has supplied over twenty HRP-series biped humanoid robot systems to research organizations. HRP-series robots were developed in collaboration with the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST). Based on this background and experience, Kawada now considers HIRO as the starter set of the robot platform pertaining to research of human-sized robots.
- The payload for holding a certain object is, at maximum, 2kg (including the end effectors). Each arm is able to exert an operation force of approximately 100N (10kg).
- The tips of HIRO’s arms can move around at a speed of approximately by 700mm/second (Definition of the movement speed: the speed of the tips of HIRO’s arms for drawing the contour of the A4 size paper (297mm x 210mm) in repetitive fashion, starting from and ending at the centre of it (approximately 1,400mm in total)).
- The control software was developed in collaboration with General Robotix, Inc. (GRX).
- AIST (playing a key role), the University of Tokyo, and GRX collaborated together to develop the “Open HRP3 (Open-architecture Human-centred Robotics Platform version 3)” for simulation software. The simulation software possesses a feature which enables research and development engineers to operate it easily.
| Robot body | ||
|---|---|---|
| Dimensions | Height: 1,570mm, Width: 500mm, Depth: 500mm (Pedestal included with protruding items excluded) |
|
| Total mass | Approximately 85kg (Robot body: 20kg) | |
| Exterior design and structure | Attire: dedicated robot suit Frame structure: aluminium alloy cast metal |
|
| Degree of freedom (axes) | 15 axes | |
| Joint | Head | 2 axes (pitch and yaw) |
| Arm | 6 axes (shoulder: 2, elbow: 1, wrist: 3) x 2 | |
| Waist | 1 axis (yaw) | |
| Standard device | Voice output (speaker) | |
| Additional device: (full specification = standard) | Hand (4 axes) x 2 Voice input (microphone x 2) Environment recognition device (head camera x 2, hand camera x 2) Information process and recognition computer Robot pedestal, others |
|
| Robot control box | ||
| Operation System (OS) | QNX™ | |
| Interface (I/F) | Serial port (RS232C) x 1 LAN port (100 base-T) x 1, others |
|
| User DIO | Input: 32, Output: 32 | |
| Size | Height: 153mm, Width: 340mm, Depth: 260mm (protruding items excluded) | |
| Weight | Approximately 8kg | |
| Robot software | ||
| Control | OpenHRP3 (OS: Windows XP) + Jython | |
| Other Applications | JAVA, C++, Python and others (library for various languages installed) | |
| Price (Domestic sales only, overseas sales currently under consideration) | ||
| Full specification | JPY 7,400,000- (tax not included) | |
| Basic specification | JPY 5,400,000- (tax not included) | |
Kawada’s sales of the new upper body humanoid robot platform “Hiro” (2009/05/11)
