Kawasaki Heavy Industries (humanoid program: RHP Kaleido)
Kawasaki Heavy Industries' robot division has been building the 'Robust Humanoid Platform' Kaleido since 2015. It is a full-size biped designed not to break when it falls, aimed at factory, home and disaster-response work through a mix of remote control (VR goggles) and autonomy. The ninth generation (Kaleido 9, 190 cm, 99 kg) was shown at iREX 2025 and is still a prototype. Kawasaki also makes the smaller RHP Friends biped and the wheeled semi-humanoid Nyokkey, and the Nyokkey-based Nurabot nurse-assistant robot (built with Foxconn) is on trial in a Taiwanese hospital. Outside humanoids it makes industrial robots and the RHP Bex and CORLEO four-legged robots.
7 humanoid models · 1 deployment on file · researched 2026-11-08
- Headquarters
- Kobe, Japan
- Founded
- 2015
- Ownership
- Division of Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd. · 7012.T
- Website
- global.kawasaki.com
- Focus
- industrial, healthcare, home, research
- Leadership
- Yasuhiko Hashimoto President, Kawasaki Heavy Industries ↗
Noboru Takagi Executive Officer, General Manager of Robot Division, Precision Machinery and Robot Company (as of 2022) ↗ - Employees
- 41,652 (2026, all of Kawasaki Heavy Industries) ↗
- Revenue
- JPY 2,311,267,000,000 (2025, company total (KHI group, fiscal year ended March 31, 2026, stated as ¥2,311,267 million); no humanoid revenue disclosed) ↗
- Production
- No humanoid sales; Kaleido is still a prototype
1
Humanoids
Each model as the maker has shown it. Specs are maker-stated; a dash means no source states the figure.
| Model | Status | Announced | Height | Weight | DoF | Payload | Runtime | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nurabot wheeled ↗Nurse-assistant robot based on Nyokkey and co-developed with Foxconn; runs on Foxconn's FoxBrain LLM and NVIDIA Jetson Orin/Holoscan; delivers medication, carries specimens and patrols wards; market launch targeted for FY2026 | Pilot | 2025 | — | — | — | — | — | not published |
| RHP Kaleido 9 ↗30 axes (hands counted separately); lower body strengthened to give twice the joint speed at the same torque; Meta Quest 3 VR teleoperation through a head stereo camera; chest LIDAR for autonomous movement; runs about 30 minutes on the robot alone; rides a wheeled 'Kaleido Station' unit between work sites; moved a 30 kg steel rack with one hand in the demo | Prototype | 2025-12 | 190 cm | 99 kg | 30 | — | 0.5 h | not published |
| RHP Friends ↗Smaller robot derived from Kaleido and designed to be safe around people (elder care); pushed a wheelchair at iREX 2022 and ran a generative-AI conversation demo at iREX 2025 | Prototype | 2022-03 | — | 55 kg | — | — | — | not published |
| Nyokkey wheeled ↗General-purpose semi-humanoid (汎用セミヒューマノイド) shown at iREX 2025 and the base for Nurabot; the source does not state its status, so 'prototype' is an assumption | Prototype | — | — | — | — | — | — | not published |
| RHP Kaleido 10 ↗Development has started; it will be a little smaller, about average adult height, so falls do less damage | Concept | 2025-12 | — | — | — | — | — | not published |
| RHP Kaleido 8 ↗Previous generation that Kaleido 9 was built from (Mynavi calls it '従来のバージョン8'); shown at iREX 2023 according to the title of a linked related article | Retired | 2023 | — | — | — | — | — | not published |
| RHP Kaleido (7th generation) ↗Shown at iREX 2022; walks at 4 km/h and balanced on a beam; combines autonomous operation with remote control | Retired | 2022-03 | — | 80 kg | — | — | — | not published |
2
Deployments
Named customers, what the robots do there, and how far it has gone.
| Customer | What | When | Stage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Taichung Veterans General Hospital (Taiwan) ↗ | Field trial of Nurabot (Foxconn + Kawasaki) delivering wound-care kits and health-education materials to bedsides; Foxconn estimates up to 30% less nurse workload | 2025 | Pilot |
3
Dated facts
Milestones, orders, factories and filings, newest first.
- 2026-05KHI opened a physical-AI development base in San Jose with Nvidia, Analog Devices, Microsoft and Fujitsu, starting with healthcare, nursing-care and mobility; the shares rose as much as 12% on the news ↗
- 2026-03KHI was incorporated on October 15, 1896 and has head offices in Tokyo and Kobe; 41,652 employees as of March 31, 2026 ↗
- 2025-12Kaleido 9 debuted at iREX 2025 (Tokyo Big Sight). In the demo it put out a mock fire, moved a fallen 30 kg shelf and rescued a dummy cat. A company official said: 'We focus on a human-sized design so that our robots can use fireproof clothing and devices' ↗
- 2025-12Kaleido 9 now steps out quickly to stop a fall. It also has a wheelchair-like 'Kaleido Station' mobility unit for fast travel on flat ground and possible automatic charging ↗
- 2025-12At iREX 2025, Kaleido 9 changed its motion patterns on voice commands through Beckhoff's TwinCAT CoAgent as part of Kawasaki's next-generation open (EtherCAT) controller demo ↗
- 2025-12Nurabot (based on Nyokkey and co-developed with Foxconn) targets a market launch in FY2026 ↗
- 2022-03At iREX 2022 the robot-division head said: 'It is now possible to do actual work in a work site with a combination of autonomous operation and remote control' ↗
- 2017-11Kaleido first appeared in public at iREX 2017 and has been one of the signature exhibits at every International Robot Exhibition since ↗
- 2015Kaleido has been in development since 2015, with the goal of a robot that does not break when it falls ↗
4
Not yet confirmed
Claims seen in only one non-official place. Shown so they can be checked, not as findings.
- Nikkei (seen only in secondhand reports from Interesting Engineering and letsdatascience.com, both not fetched): KHI plans to put Noetra's physical-AI platform into Kaleido and targets industrial deployment as early as 2030
- humanoid.guide lists a Kaleido 9 price of US$200,000 and marks the listing 'Not Verified'
- aiwiki.ai says Kaleido 9 can lift about 18 kg, roughly 35% more than the previous generation
- A search snippet of a kawasakirobotics.com page (blocked) says Kaleido 9 took part in a ribbon-cutting in Tokyo on 2026-03-28; another snippet mentions 2035 as the target for a practical version
- Search snippet of a blocked kawasakirobotics.com page: all humanoid development is led by KHI in Tokyo, and Kawasaki Robotics USA does not develop humanoids
S
Sources
Retrieved 2026-11-08.
- 川重のタフなロボット「Kaleido」がよりマッチョに進化!【2025国際ロボット展】 — Mynavi TECH+
- なぜフィジカルAIの象徴がヒューマノイドなのか＠2025国際ロボット展（後編） — MONOist (ITmedia)
- 川崎重工が次世代“オープン”コントローラー構想披露、EtherCATで統合同期制御 — MONOist (ITmedia)
- Cutting-Edge Humanoid Robots on Display at Tokyo Show — Jiji Press via Adnkronos
- Kawasaki presents the pinnacles of its robot developments at iREX 2022 — New Atlas
- Foxconn Accelerates Robotics for Global Healthcare Industry — NVIDIA Blog
- Kawasaki Heavy ties up with Nvidia on physical AI, and the rideable robot horse gets a foundation model — The Next Web
- Company Profile — Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd.
- Noetra Launches Full-Scale R&D for Japan-Developed Multimodal Foundation Model — Honda Motor Co., Ltd.