RobotsLife.com – Tadahiro Kawada

[old but interesting interview] Tadahiro KAWADA, Director, Kawada Industries – Aircraft and Mechanical Systems Division

Kawada Industries is the company that built the HRP-2P (HRP-2-prototype, showed left and below).

This robot, presented for the first time at the end of March 2002, is an anthropomorphic, biped machine. It has been developed for the Humanoid Robotics Project (HRP), sponsored by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), part of the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry.

Kawada Industries was in charge of the hardware design and fabrication, while two other companies, Yaskawa Electric Corp. and Shimizu Corp., were responsible of the other aspects of the project.

HRP-2P is taller (1,54 m) but lighter (58 kg) than Honda’s Asimo. It has 30 degrees of freedom and will be used for experiments later this year including “walking on uneven terrains, falling or tipping-over, or getting-up from fallen positions”.

Tadahiro Kawada is Director at Kawada Industries’ Aircraft and Mechanical Systems Division, which was in charge of HRP-2P.

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