Hiroshi Ishiguro's laboratory · research humanoid
ibuki
A child android styled after a 10-year-old boy that rolls on wheels yet moves its upper body to look as if it is walking; built for research with no fixed commercial use. The launch report names the lab as an 'Intelligent Robotics Laboratory, Wakayama University', which conflicts with other descriptions of Ishiguro's lab.
- 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 research humanoid from Hiroshi Ishiguro's laboratory (Osaka University / ATR).
Real-world use
No customers or deployments reported yet.
Timeline
- Released
- Not yet
Maker
Hiroshi Ishiguro's laboratoryUniversity lab · founded 2003 · Toyonaka, Osaka, Japangovernment research funding, notably the JST ERATO Ishiguro Symbiotic Human-Robot Interaction Project (website from Dec 2014)
What it has been shown doing
We checked public videos and press for ibuki and found no clear demo of the skills we track yet.
Public attention
How much public attention ibuki gets, from open data.
- No Wikipedia article of its own yet
- 3 news stories from reputable press listed on this page
Measures how much people read and write about a robot, not how good it is. Measured 2026-10-14; same method for every robot. How it is measured
What’s inside
The parts the company has talked about publicly.
- Movement
- Wheeled base
- Actuators & motors
- 47 degrees of freedom in total (JST figure) used for gestures, hand signs and facial expressions; actuator type not published.
- Hands
- Articulated hands able to make hand signs (part of the 47 DoF); no per-hand DoF published.
- Other details
- Rolls on a wheeled unit with a pair of eccentric wheels for side-to-side sway and a ball-screw actuator for up-and-down motion, imitating the shifting centre of gravity of a walking person; styled as a boy of about 10. Intended to grow into an autonomous conversational android that walks alongside people.
From the maker
ibuki is the only humanoid from Hiroshi Ishiguro's laboratory (Osaka University / ATR) in the atlas.
Watch ibuki
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
- 1 (research prototype)
- Sold or delivered
- not sold
- Where it is sold or used
- Japan (JST ERATO Ishiguro project, Osaka University)
News
The latest 3, newest first. Summaries are ours; tap through for the original.
- Ishiguro's child android ibuki draws mixed reactions
A trade-press report described the wheeled boy android as a research robot with no fixed application yet.
Robotics & Automation News - IEEE Spectrum spotlights ibuki in Video Friday
IEEE Spectrum showed the roughly 10-year-old robot child and noted it only appears to walk from the waist up.
IEEE Spectrum - JST announces child-like android ibuki
Japan Science and Technology Agency released ibuki from its ERATO Ishiguro Symbiotic Human-Robot Interaction Project, describing a 47-DoF android with a walking-mimicking wheeled base.
Japan Science and Technology Agency
Sources
Figures come from press coverage. Every link below backs something on this page.
Photos and logos only identify each robot and its maker. Simbeing is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsing any company, and nothing here is advertising. Figures are for statistics only and are not advice of any kind. Terms of use