Kawada Industries (robot business now Kawada Robotics Corporation) · research humanoid
HIRO
An upper-body humanoid research platform with a head and two arms, released by Kawada the same year as its factory sibling NEXTAGE.
- Price
- —Not published
- Height
- —Not published
- Weight
- —Not published
- Payload
- —Not published
- Speed
- —Not published
- Battery
- —Not published
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Why it matters
A discontinued humanoid from Kawada Industries.
Real-world use
No customers or deployments reported yet.
Timeline
- First shown
- 2009
- Released
- 2009
Maker
Kawada Industries (robot business now Kawada Robotics Corporation)CompanyPart of the KTI Kawada Group; no external funding rounds reported.
Public attention
A historic robot: no longer sold or in use, so it is not ranked against current humanoids.
- No Wikipedia article of its own yet
- No recent press stories listed yet
Measures how much people read and write about a robot, not how good it is. Measured 2026-10-13; same method for every robot. How it is measured
What’s inside
The parts the company has talked about publicly.
- Hands
- simple
- Movement
- Stationary
- AI & software
- Kawada says it was among the first companies to commercialise ROS support for its robots; the open-source rtmros_hironx packages (RT-middleware based, with a MoveIt configuration) target HIRO/NEXTAGE OPEN.
- Other details
- Upper-body humanoid research platform (head, torso, two arms) announced the same year as factory sibling NEXTAGE; its research role was later taken by NEXTAGE OPEN.
Named suppliers:ROS (Open Robotics)
Lineage
Every Kawada Industries humanoid in order.
Watch HIRO
Made, sold and where
Unit counts are usually company figures; analysts often disagree.
- Price
- Not published
- How to get one
- No official buying page found
- Sold or delivered
- sold to research labs; price not published; no longer in Kawada's product lineup
- Where it is sold or used
- Kawada Industries, Japan
Side by side with its peers
Picked by the same rules for every humanoid: another maker’s robot that moves the same way, is at the same stage and does at least one of the same main jobs, first shown within two years. Closer size and price rank higher. Few robots match closely, so these are the nearest matches. How we choose
| Measure | HIROKawada Industries |  ECCE (ECCEROBOT)The Robot Studio and the EU ECCEROBOT projectSame job: research · Both fixed in place · Both past robots |  KotaroUniversity of Tokyo JSK Lab (Ikuo Mizuuchi, Masayuki Inaba)Same job: research · Both fixed in place · Both past robots |  Diego-sanUC San Diego Machine Perception Lab with Kokoro and Hanson RoboticsSame job: research · Both fixed in place · Both past robots |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First shown | 2009 | 2009-11 | 2005 | 2013-01 |
| Status | Discontinued | Retired | Retired | Discontinued |
| Height | — | 105 cm | 133 cm | 130 cm |
| Weight | — | 26 kg | 20 kg | 30 kg |
| Joints | — | 60 | 91 | 62 |
| Speed | — | — | — | — |
| Payload | — | — | — | — |
| Battery | — | — | — | — |
| Price | — | — | — | — |
Sources
Figures come from the maker. Every link below backs something on this page.
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