WhereIsAtlas · Robotics
What Happened to WABOT-1?
The world's first full-scale humanoid robot — a 1973 Japanese milestone that prefigured the robots of today.
WABOT-1, completed in 1973 at Waseda University in Japan, was the world's first full-scale anthropomorphic robot. It was an early ancestor of modern humanoids like those made by Boston Dynamics and Unitree — but today it is retired, kept as a historic artifact.
The first full-scale humanoid
WABOT-1 was completed in 1973 at Japan's Waseda University, in the lab that became the Humanoid Robotics Institute. It is widely recognized as the first full-scale anthropomorphic robot — a machine made in the image of a person.
At a moment when robots were mostly industrial arms and factory tools, WABOT-1 was a bold leap. It could walk on two legs, grip objects with two hands, and even utter simple words in Japanese. For 1973, it was an astonishing convergence of engineering and imagination.
A bold experiment
WABOT-1 wasn't meant to do work better than a human; it was meant to prove that a machine could be built in a human's shape and move like one. It walked, grasped and spoke in a limited way — the first steps toward the humanoid robots we know today.
The lineage it began
WABOT-1 launched a celebrated series at Waseda, including later WABOT and WABIAN models, and it established the university as a global pioneer of humanoid robotics. Its ambition was handed down to the modern robots made by Boston Dynamics (founded 1992 by Marc Raibert) and the Chinese firm Unitree (founded 2016). To be precise, WABOT-1 did not found those companies — but it was their intellectual grandparent, proving that a human-like machine was possible.
Where WABOT-1 is now
WABOT-1 is no longer operational. It is preserved as a historic artifact and referenced throughout the history of humanoid robotics. As modern humanoids walk, run and even do backflips, WABOT-1 stands as the quiet original — the robot that first showed the world what machines in human form could be.
Entries in this story
Sources
- Humanoid Robotics Institute - history — Waseda University (2026-09-05)
- WABOT-1 and Waseda humanoid robots — Waseda University (2026-09-05)