Humanoid & robot atlas
ISAC (Intelligent Soft Arm Control)
Photo: Vanderbilt University Center for Intelligent Systems (Kazuhiko Kawamura) (official image), from cdn.vanderbilt.edu. Image policy
RetiredUnited States

Vanderbilt University Center for Intelligent Systems · research humanoid

ISAC

Intelligent Soft Arm Control

Upper-body humanoid that began as a robotic feeding aid for people with disabilities (presented in 1994) and grew into an HRI test bed with two 6-DoF arms actuated by McKibben artificial muscles and a pan-tilt head with stereo colour cameras, plus microphones and infrared sensors. The exact date the two-arm humanoid form was completed is not stated in the sources.

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

One of the first humanoids driven by McKibben pneumatic artificial muscles, used for long-running human-robot interaction and cognitive-control research.

Real-world use

No customers or deployments reported yet.

Timeline

First shown
1994-03
Released
Not yet

Maker

Vanderbilt University Center for Intelligent SystemsCompany

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 2026-10-14; same method for every robot. How it is measured

What’s inside

No component details published yet.

Hands
unknown
Movement
Stationary

From the maker

ISAC (Intelligent Soft Arm Control) is the only humanoid from Vanderbilt University Center for Intelligent Systems (Kazuhiko Kawamura) in the atlas.

Made, sold and where

No production or sales figures published yet.

Price
Not published
How to get one
No official buying page found

Sources

Figures come from a published paper. Every link below backs something on this page.

NASA Technical Reports Server An intelligent robotic aid system for human services (CIRFFSS 1994) Vanderbilt University A Parallel Distributed Cognitive Control System for a Humanoid Robot (International Journal of Humanoid Robotics 1(1), 2004) Vanderbilt University ETD Begley thesis (Vanderbilt, 2008): ISAC's two 6-DoF McKibben-muscle arms

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