Japanese student creates world’s smallest humanoid robot

Student Mitsuya Tatsuhiko (Japan) has earned himself a Guinness World Records title by building the smallest humanoid robot.

The height of his tiny robot is just 57.676 mm (2.27 in), which is less than half the size of the previous record holder. It’s just slightly bigger than a golf tee (2.10 in) and a touch taller than the width of your credit or debit card (2 in).

Tatsuhiko is currently a postgraduate student at Nagoya Institute of Technology, researching the modularization of crawler robots. His interest in robots, however, goes way back.

He explained: “I entered a craft club called Invention Club. I saw a simple bipedal robot there, which made me want to build my own. Since then, I’m deep in the world of robots.”

Tatsuhiko built his first humanoid robot when he was just 10 years old. While it was a simple robot with moving arms and legs, he was satisfied with what he had created.

Tatsuhiko continued building robots at home. Although he had to pause his passion during high school, he always planned to reconvene once he had the free time.

After entering university, Tatsuhiko started making robots again as planned. Then he saw a news article that led him to a Guinness World Records attempt.

“I saw an article that a moving Gundam (at Gundam Factory Yokohama) had set a record for the largest mobile humanoid robot. That reminded me that the smallest humanoid robot used to belong to a Japanese firm as well. So I decided to check what happened to the record.”

He worked on making his robot as small as he possibly could, particularly the legs. Tatsuhiko’s robot features a parallel linkage to save space.

His initial machine featured SMA actuators instead of motors, which made the robot’s movement awkward and slow.

Tatsuhiko continued to work on his robot, and he finally applied for the record using his third iteration, completed in his fourth year of undergraduate studies.

“I’m extremely glad. I never received any major awards for my robots, so I feel my work has been paid off,” he said.

Tatsuhiko will continue his robot research at postgraduate school. After that, a job related to robots. He will also continue creating robots at home for his own enjoyment.

GWR