Yoshiyuki Sankai (born 1958/1959) is a Japanese billionaire businessman and academic. He is the founder, president and CEO of the cyborg-robot maker Cyberdyne, as well as a professor of the Graduate School of Systems & Information Engineering at the

University of Tsukuba is a List of national universities in Japan, national research university located in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, Ibaraki, Japan. The university has 28 college clusters and schools with around 16,500 students (as of 2014). The main Tsukuba ca ...

Early life

Sankai has a doctorate in engineering from the

Career

Sankai is a professor of the Graduate School of Systems & Information Engineering at the University of Tsukuba. He is also a visiting professor at

Baylor College of Medicine The Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) is a private medical school in Houston, Texas, United States. Originally as the Baylor University College of Medicine from 1903 to 1969, the college became independent with the current name and has been se ...

, Houston, Texas, US. Sankai led the

and Cyberdyne team that developed the

Hybrid Assistive Limb The Hybrid Assistive Limb (also known as HAL) is a powered, soft-bodied exoskeleton suit developed by Japan's Tsukuba University and the robotics company Cyberdyne. It is designed to support and expand the physical capabilities of its users, p ...

powered exoskeleton An exoskeleton is a wearable device that augments, enables, assists, or enhances motion, posture, or physical activity through mechanical interaction with and force applied to the user’s body. Other common names for a wearable exoskeleton in ...

. Sankai later became an international fellow at the

Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences The Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (, IVA), founded on 24 October 1919 by King Gustaf V, is one of the royal academies in Sweden. The academy is an independent organisation, which promotes contact and exchange between business, ...

(IVA).

Personal life

Sankai lives in Ibaraki, Japan.

References

Living people 1950s births Japanese billionaires Japanese inventors University of Tsukuba alumni Academic staff of the University of Tsukuba Japanese chief executives Japanese company founders Technology company founders 20th-century Japanese businesspeople 21st-century Japanese businesspeople Year of birth missing (living people) {{Japan-business-bio-stub