Humanoid robots in Japan, from ASIMO to today. Offbrand Human

Japan built the first full-size humanoid robot in 1973 and has never put one on sale. Fifty-three years of the most famous walking-robot research on earth produced nothing a member of the public could buy, and the two machines that got closest to a checkout page were a dog and a receptionist.

What Japan sells to the public in 2026 is companions: a 43 cm emotional robot from Groove X, a walking phone from Sharp, a furry blob from Casio, a robot dog from Sony that is on its way out of its home market. The full-size humanoid robots Japan has working inside its buildings this year are Chinese.

Dated timeline of Japan's humanoid lineage from WABOT-1 in 1970 to 1973 through WABOT-2, Honda's E and P series, Sony's AIBO ERS-110 of May 1999 which sold 5,000 units at 250,000 yen in 20 minutes, ASIMO in October 2000 at 120 cm and 54 kg, Sony's QRIO in 2003, AIST's HRP-4C in March 2009, SoftBank's Pepper in June 2015 which sold its first 1,000 in 60 seconds and reached about 27,000 built, Honda ending ASIMO development in July 2018, ASIMO's last public appearance in March 2022 and the name going to car software in January 2025, with only the AIBO and Pepper rows ever sold to the public

The lineage, dated

Year	Machine	Maker	What it was	On sale to the public?
1970 to 1973	WABOT-1	Waseda University	Walked on two legs, gripped objects, held simple Japanese conversation	No
1980 to 1984	WABOT-2	Waseda University	Read a printed score and played an electronic organ	No
1986 to 1993	E series	Honda	Legs only. The walking problem, solved in isolation	No
1993 to 1997	P series	Honda	First full bodies, culminating in P3	No
May 1999	AIBO ERS-110	Sony	Robot dog, 250,000 yen (about US$2,500 then)	Yes. 5,000 units sold out online in 20 minutes
Oct 2000	ASIMO	Honda	120 cm, 54 kg, 26 degrees of freedom, 1.6 km/h	No. Never commercialized
2003	QRIO (formerly SDR)	Sony	60 cm, 7.3 kg. Guinness credited it as the first bipedal robot able to run	No. "Developed and marketed (but never sold)"
Mar 2009	HRP-4C	AIST	158 cm, 43 kg, 38 motors, sang using Vocaloid	No
Jun 2015	Pepper	SoftBank Robotics / Aldebaran	Wheeled torso greeter, under $2,000 plus service fees	Yes. First batch of 1,000 sold out in 60 seconds
Jul 2018	ASIMO development ends	Honda	Technology redirected to "more practical applications"	n/a
Mar 2022	ASIMO's last public appearance	Honda	Twenty-one years after the first	n/a
Jan 2025	ASIMO OS	Honda	The name reassigned to an operating system for electric cars	n/a

Two rows in that table had a checkout button. Sony's dog, and SoftBank's greeter.

Pepper got closest to a mass-market humanoid, and it is the cautionary one. About 27,000 units were built by June 2021, when SoftBank paused production citing weak demand. The robotics arm became Aldebaran under United Robotics Group, and Aldebaran went into receivership in 2025. The full accounting of that generation sits in the consumer robot graveyard.

There are no plans at the current time to introduce ASIMO for sale or lease in the U.S. (@Honda, 2015-08-18)

Honda's own account, in 2015, answering a member of the public who asked how to get an ASIMO. It is a US-specific answer given three years before development stopped, and it is the closest thing to a plain statement from the maker on the row of the table that never got a checkout button.

Honda kept the name and dropped the robot

Honda stopped ASIMO development in July 2018 and retired the machine from public duty in March 2022. Its own robotics page now explains the strategy change in plain terms: rather than "being hung up on supporting people in every situation with one humanoid robot that has diverse capabilities," Honda is pursuing "various robots, each with distinct functions." What it lists today is the Avatar Robot, a remotely operated pair of hands, and UNI-ONE, a seated personal mobility device. No target date for practical use of the Avatar Robot appears on that page.

The name went to the car division. At CES on January 7, 2025, Honda announced ASIMO OS, a vehicle operating system for its 0 Series electric cars. The most recognizable humanoid brand in history is now software in a dashboard.

Honda's own recording of the CES 2025 press conference described above, the primary record of where the ASIMO name went: introduced as ASIMO OS, the vehicle operating system for the 0 Saloon and 0 SUV prototypes, at a car keynote rather than a robotics one.

aibo survived, and is leaving Japan

Sony's dog is the exception that keeps proving the rule. The original AIBO launched in May 1999, was discontinued in January 2006, lost repair support in July 2014, and came back as the current aibo in January 2018. It remains the most behaviorally convincing consumer robot anyone has shipped: up to 100 faces recognized, more than 50 voice commands, a personality that drifts over years.

In June 2026, Sony said it will end aibo sales in Japan once current stock runs out, leaving the United States as the only market, with support, parts, and cloud subscriptions continuing. Sony's Japanese aibo site now carries the plain notice that the ERS-1000 series has ended sales. US retail runs above $3,000 per AFP's June 2026 reporting; Sony does not publish a cleaner number, and the required AI Cloud Plan is bundled for three years, then $300 a year after that. Live status sits on the aibo tracker page; the rest of the four-legged field is in the robot dogs market map.

Japan's most famous consumer robot, no longer sold in Japan. That is the shape of this whole story.

What you can actually buy from Japan today

Yen conversions use 159.16 yen per dollar, the Federal Reserve's H.10 rate for July 31, 2026.

Product	Maker	What it is	Price	Sold where
LOVOT 3.0	Groove X	43 cm wheeled emotional companion, no useful function by design	From 577,500 yen (about $3,630), plus a required care plan from 9,900 yen/month (about $62)	Japan store; no US retail (checked Jul 2026)
LOVOT 2.0	Groove X	Previous generation, still listed	From 449,900 yen (about $2,830)	Japan store
RoBoHoN	Sharp	19.5 cm walking, talking robot that is also a phone	145,200 yen Wi-Fi (about $910) or 239,800 yen LTE (about $1,510), plus 1,078 yen/month (about $6.80)	Japan
aibo ERS-1000	Sony	Robot dog	Above $3,000 (AFP, June 2026)	US only, going forward
Moflin	Casio	Furry AI companion with no face or limbs	$429	US and Japan
PARO	AIST / Intelligent System Co.	Therapeutic seal, an FDA Class 2 device since 2009	Not published, quoted on request	Clinical and distributor channels
KHR-3HV Ver.3.1	Kondo Kagaku	401 mm, 1.8 kg, 22-axis hobby biped kit	"Open price," not published	Japan hobby retail

Not one full-size, general-purpose humanoid on that list. As of August 2026 I can find no Japanese-made full-size humanoid with a published price and a way for a member of the public to order it. Every Japanese product with a public price is a companion, most of them under 50 cm, and three of the seven carry a mandatory recurring fee on top of the hardware. The rest of the buyable companion field, most of it not Japanese, is in the desktop robots guide, and the full-size machines that do have order pages are in what you can actually buy in 2026.

The full-size bipeds working in Japan are Chinese

IEEE Spectrum's Tim Hornyak reported from the Humanoids Summit in Tokyo on July 4, 2026. About 40 robots were on display, and "Chinese systems outnumbered Japanese by roughly three to one." Two of the Japanese exhibitors were showing Chinese hardware: Omakase Robotics had a Unitree G1 modified with an external PC controller, a dexterous hand, a suction-cup manipulator and a sensor hat, and summit sponsor GMO AI & Robotics is running G1s with Japan Airlines to load and unload cargo containers at Haneda airport.

Omakase CTO Shuichi Nagao gave the regulatory reason out loud: "You cannot sell these bipedal systems in Japan for safety and compliance reasons." Which explains a good deal of that empty column in the table above.

The industrial numbers in the same piece are worse reading. McKinsey partner Ani Kelkar's summit analysis has Japan holding the top spot in manufacturing robot density from at least 1994 to 2009, then slipping to second in 2014, third in 2019, and fifth in 2024, at a density of 446 against South Korea's 1,220. China now runs roughly 2 million industrial robots, about 4.5 times Japan's count, and took 54 percent of all robots installed worldwide in 2024.

Japan's answer, so far

Two moves are on the board.

The first is a consortium. Waseda professor Tetsuya Ogata chairs the AI Robot Association, a nonprofit working with Toyota and other members on shared foundational technology. His framing, per the same IEEE report: "The world of AI is inherently a game of scale. Therefore, Japan's absolute prerequisite is to secure a competitive baseline of scale."

The second is a checkbook. On October 8, 2025, SoftBank Group agreed to buy ABB's robotics business for $5.375 billion, roughly 818.7 billion yen, for a unit employing about 7,000 people, with closing expected mid to late 2026. Masayoshi Son's line was that "SoftBank's next frontier is Physical AI." He is buying a Swiss-headquartered industrial arm maker to get there, which tells you what he thought of building it at home.

Neither move puts a Japanese humanoid in a shop. Both are bets that the manufacturing and foundation-model layer matters more than the robot with the famous name.

What to take from this

The Japanese lineage is real research history that never became a market: the walking work everyone still builds on, zero consumer humanoids in fifty-three years, and a strategic exit by the company most identified with the field. Sony and SoftBank each sold one machine to the public, and each has since pulled back.

If you want a Japanese robot in your house in 2026, your list is LOVOT (Japan only), RoBoHoN (Japan only), aibo (US only, above $3,000), Moflin at $429, and PARO if you are a clinician with a purchase order. If you want a full-size humanoid, you are buying Chinese, the same as Japan Airlines.

Every price here carries a date because every one of them can move. Spot a change before I do, and tell me.