ZMP Inc. is a Japanese robotics company. The company was established in January 2001, based on the research results encouraged the Kitano Symbiotic System Project, under the jurisdiction of Japan's MEXT. Their first product released was the humanoid

robot A robot is a machine—especially one Computer program, programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions Automation, automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the robot control, co ...

PINO in 2001. The company's name comes from the Zero Moment Point, a physical quantity related to the dynamics of legged systems. More recently, they released the humanoid robot nuvo in 2005 and the music robot miuro in 2006. In 2009, the research platform for next generation cars RoboCar was released. In 2008, ZMP and 3 other Japanese robot companies (''Tmsuk Co Ltd'', ''Vstone Co Ltd'', and ''Business Design Laboratory Co Ltd'') teamed up in an effort to promote the diffusion of robotic technologies in everyday life. This effort was called the 'Association for Market Creation of the Future Generation Robots'. In July 2015,

Sony is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (i ...

teamed up with ZMP Inc. to form a

Joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acce ...

called Aerosense, to create commercial drones for the survey and inspection of difficult to access (e.g. remote) areas. The following month, Aerosense released videos of two prototypes, the ''AS-DTO1-E''

VTOL A vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft is one that can takeoff and landing, take off and land vertically without relying on a runway. This classification can include a variety of types of aircraft including helicopters as well as thrust- ...

, and the ''AS-MCO1-P'' quadcopter.

Sony Electric Vehicle

ZMP is also working together with Sony in another area.

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

is working on automobile technology, self-driving cars and even perhaps a driverless taxi service. More recently,

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

was rumoured (later confirmed) to be working on electric vehicles ( iCar/Project Titan) to rival those made by the likes of Tesla. Sony hopes to do well from this emerging self-driving automotive industry and has therefore invested $842,000 in ZMP.

PATORO disinfection robot

To help building managers deal with the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, ZMP is leasing PATORO, an "autonomous security and disinfection robot", for spraying disinfectant over surfaces, such as the hallways of large structures; PATORO also has building security functions.

References

{{reflist Robotics companies of Japan Robotics in Japan Companies established in 2001 Manufacturing companies based in Tokyo Electric vehicle industry Unmanned aerial vehicles of Japan Japanese brands Sony