Humanoid & robot atlas
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DiscontinuedJapanAssisted

Tokyo Institute of Technology; product version by HiBot · legged machine

ACM-R5H

A waterproof snake robot made of segments that each carry their own battery and motors, so it can be lengthened or shortened. Specs are for a 9-segment, 170 cm snake.

Price
—Not published
Height
12 cmTaller than 5%
Weight
7 kgHeavier than 16%
Payload
—Not published
Speed
1.4 km/hFaster than 37%
Battery
—Not published

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Why it matters

An amphibious, modular snake robot that can both slither on land and swim.

Real-world use

Not published

Timeline

First shown
2005
Released
2010
First ACM-R5H prototype completed at Tokyo Tech

How it stacks up

Against other legged & novel that publish the figure. Pick a measure.

Not published by the maker: payload, battery, price.

Public attention

A historic robot: no longer sold or in use, so it is not ranked against current machines.

  • No Wikipedia article of its own yet
  • 1 news story from reputable press listed on this page

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.

Movement
Other movement · 18 joints
How it runs
Assisted. An operator steered it by remote control while its onboard control generated the snake-like body waves that move it on land and in water.
Actuators & motors
Two DC servomotors per segment (18 DoF for a nine-segment snake); passive wheels/fins.
Sensors & vision
CCD cameras in head and tail segments; payload compartments for extra sensors.
Compute
HiBot Mini2Axes SH2 microcontroller in each segment; head with ARM Cortex-M4 and Wi-Fi.
Battery & power
Each segment carries its own battery and charger.
Materials & build
Aluminium, rubber and plastic; amphibious, dust- and water-resistant.
Other details
About 1.7 m and 7 kg for nine segments; modular length.

From the maker

ACM-R5H is the only machine from Tokyo Institute of Technology (Hirose lab); product version by HiBot in the atlas.

Watch ACM-R5H

Video: Michele Guarnieri on YouTube. Plays from youtube-nocookie.com when you press play.

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
Built
Prototype 2005; product version by HiBot from 2010
Sold or delivered
Offered commercially by HiBot; numbers not published (now discontinued)
Where it is sold or used
Tokyo, Japan
Customers and pilots
Not published

News

The latest 1, newest first. Summaries are ours; tap through for the original.

  1. HiBot shows new amphibious snake

    IEEE Spectrum previewed HiBot's more modular ACM-R5H with an ARM Cortex-M4 controller at iREX 2013 in Tokyo.

    IEEE Spectrum

Sources

Figures come from press coverage. Every link below backs something on this page.

IEEE Spectrum HiBot Demos New Amphibious Snake Robot IEEE Spectrum Japanese Snake Robot Goes Where Humans Can't en.wikipedia.org ACM-R5H: how it is operated

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