Stories of QRIO and PINO, and Beyond: Lessons Learned from Small Humanoid Projects From R&D to Business

In 1997, Sony announced AIBO, a fully autonomous small quadruped robot for home entertainment, and in 1999 the company began selling it as a consumer product. Soon after development, two small humanoid robots were announced. One was QRIO by Sony, which is about 60cm height body with dynamical bipedal walking and whole-body cooperative control. The other was PINO by the ERATO Kitano Symbiotic Systems Project, which is about 70cm height body, Open HW/SW with inexpensive off-the-shelf component. In this paper, we revisit the two humanoids and nearly 20-year-old technologies, and discuss what were done 20 years ago, what have been achieved and what challenges are ahead.